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New Testament Prophets
Just like men have misapplied the role of the five–fold ministries, so also have they done with the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit (see 1Corinthians 12:8 - 10) by “over–specializing” them. For example, someone receives a word of knowledge in one of the gatherings and all of a sudden that person then becomes the special one to seek out if we need a word from God. But what if he is not in the meeting on the day of our need? Do we just walk away without having connected with the Lord? The truth is that these spiritual gifts are given to the whole church; they are for everybody.
Here is how I see that we are to move in the Spirit. Paul says:
For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted.
Prophetic ministry (which also includes words of knowledge, words of wisdom as well as interpretation of tongues) is for all of us to experience. It is not about individuals who promote themselves/their ministries and then represent themselves as unique among the brethren. “Oh he/she’s a specialist, let’s seek them out.” In fact, it is not really about them at all; it is about Jesus and His coming to have first place in everything. Genuine New Testament prophets will have this goal – to see Christ miraculously revealed in His body through a diverse yet humbly submitted and integrated people.
I see prophecy as similar to how a faucet works with water. Paul says it this way.
But one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolation.
So how does it work? The Lord will impress a certain person on my heart. So, I go to them with the purpose of edifying, exhorting, or consoling them. All of us have done the very same thing at some point in our walk with God. We wanted to encourage someone, so we spoke encouragement to them. We wanted to console or edify someone, so we did so. For many, without realizing it, we were actually prophesying to others. It is really quite simple. Men have complicated it. So, I see prophecy as water flowing through a faucet. I go to edify, console, or exhort someone. I lay my hand on them and I open the faucet. As I begin praying, suddenly from up out of my heart flows the water of life as a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom, a word of faith, or a word of healing. It really is that simple and we can all do it. We can all prophesy. Such ministry is not for a special few; it is for all. In the New Testament, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are for everybody.
I am not against education; we all need to learn at the feet of others. But some people put more trust and confidence in their education than in the leading of the Holy Spirit. Thank God for Saul of Tarsus. This amazing man had more degrees than a thermometer. He studied under Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), one of Israel’s greatest teachers. He wrote in Philippians 3:5 - 6 that he was of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, a zealous persecutor of the Church, and concerning the Law, found blameless. If anybody had vision, Saul of Tarsus did. He was going to kill anybody who had a different hermeneutic and got in his way. In Acts Chapter 9 he was getting letters of authorization to put Christians into jail. He was absolutely committed to destroying them – until he ran into Jesus Christ on the Damascus road where the glorious light of God blinded him. And he heard this voice, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” I am sure that he immediately began thinking, “Whoever that is, I am sure that it is God.” So, he said, “Who are You, Lord?” I’ll bet he thought, “Just don’t be Jesus.” How do you think he felt when the Lord answered him that the One to whom he was talking was in fact, Jesus? And the Lord left him blind for three days because He wanted Paul to come to Him, to wait upon Him, and to hear Him. Hallelujah. Paul needed a revelation of Jesus.
And all of his previous status that he had attained through education? Saul laid it all on the dung heap for the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:4 - 11). On that Damascus road, he had a “collision of vision” (Acts 9:1 - 9). The vision he had for his own life within Judaism was shattered when He suddenly beheld the heavenly vision of Christ.
After these events, Paul had to go to the back side of the desert and unlearn and then relearn, to work through the implications of the collapse of one vision as another one from heaven began to permeate his soul. Many today are having a similar vision collision. Many are coming out of religious systems where men function at the head and Christ is not being revealed through His body. And deep down inside, they know that there must be more. Indeed, God does have more for His people than simply going to a building once a week and listening to a sermon that they never do anything with. They are beginning to realize that there must be more than a simple religious experience. Something inside of them is churning. All believers know that God has more for us than what we have yet realized (Romans 8:23 - 29). In fact, all of creation knows that there is yet more to be revealed from the work of God among His people (Romans 8:19). Where is this awareness rising from? It is the Holy Spirit Himself who is saying, “There is more” (Romans 8:26).
After Paul was healed from being blinded and then filled with the Holy Spirit, he tried to connect with the Lord’s disciples to tell them he had been wrong and that they had been right. But they didn’t want anything to do with him. Even Ananias, when the Lord told him, “I want you to go to Damascus. There is a man there who’s been blinded. I did it. I want you to go lay hands on him so that he can receive his sight back.” “Oh okay, who is it?” “Saul of Tarsus.” “Uh oh, time out, Lord. He kills Christians and I’m a Christian.” But in spite of his fears, Ananias was hearing the Lord accurately. So, he got up, went to Damascus, and changed the world.
Paul not only received his physical sight when Ananias prayed for him, he was now also beginning to see in a realm that was wholly new to him – it is called the realm of the Spirit (Greek, PNEUMATIKOS).
Now concerning spiritual gifts (Greek, PNEUMATIKOS), brethren, I do not want you to be unaware (Greek, AGNOEO).
The Greek word AGNOEO means to be ignorant, to not know. And it is the same word used concerning the realms of both the Spirit and the demonic.
that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant (Greek, AGNOEO) of his schemes.
God wants us to understand both how the enemy works as well as how God works. We must learn the realm of the Holy Spirit that God has immersed us into. In 1Corinthians 12, Paul lists the gifts of the Spirit and how the body of Christ is to function. Then in 1Corinthians 13, he gives us the proper motive for how we are to function – love. But in Chapter 14:1, he sums up his thoughts when he says,
Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts… (Greek, PNEUMATIKOS)
Desire the realm of the Spirit. In the original Greek, the word “gifts” is not there. The translators added it into the sentence because they thought it would clarify Paul’s thinking. But when they did so, something got lost. Paul was talking not only about specific gifts of the Spirit, but that we are to desire to be in the realm of the Spirit. Why? Because it is, “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28 NKJV).
Consider Jesus when He stood before Pilate. Pilate asked Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?” (John 18:33). And Jesus answered, “Are you saying this on your own initiative, or did others tell you about Me?” (John 18:34). Pilate responded, “Your own nation and the chief priests delivered You to me; what have You done?” (John 18:35). Notice Jesus’ response. “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” (John 18:36).
Christ’s kingdom is from heaven and we are now citizens in that kingdom. As a result, though we are still in this world, we are not of it; we are born of God. After Jesus died and rose from the dead, He actually walked through closed doors and yet also partook of food with His disciples (Luke 24:36 - 43). And they were stunned as they interacted with Him. So also, when we die, the world and the things of this world will pass away and we will be with Him in that other realm (Ecclesiastes 12:7 - 8). But God is calling us to taste of that realm now, to participate in the power and wisdom of that realm now, to lay aside our tendency to prioritize the issues of this life, and to hunger for the realm of the Spirit.
For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise…
If you want to know what the foolish things of this world look like, look in the mirror. He has chosen us – we who are foolish and weak, in order to shame the strong and mighty.
and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.”
It really is all about Jesus. It is not about us, or our gifts, or our ministries, or our education. Heaven’s focus, the focus of the entire realm of the Spirit is simply Jesus. And all of human history is heading toward this ultimate goal, that this One, “the firstborn from the dead, …will come to have first place in everything” (Colossians 1:18).
but just as it is written, “THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND WHICH HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.” For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God,
God wants us to know the depths of His heart and the wealth of heaven that His Spirit/His presence has freely brought to us. This is what Paul realized. In the very next verse, he went on to say that those things which the Spirit had revealed to him were what he spoke about (1Corinthians 2:13). His gospel set men free because its source was heaven. The challenge now falls to us. We too must listen, discern, and then speak of the spiritual riches freely given to us by God.
No human eye has seen nor has any human ear heard the depths of the heart of God. Yet, God reveals them. Do you want to know what God has freely given to you? Then ask, seek, and knock.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
But often when we have asked the Lord about something for a couple of times and nothing seems to be happening, we tend to quit. However, the Lord wants to encourage us, “You have need of endurance. Learn how to persevere by finding Me there with you in the circumstance.” In fact, the Greek could be more literally translated as, “Ask, and keep on asking; seek, and keep on seeking; knock, and keep on knocking.”
The Spirit has been given to us so that we might know all the things freely given to us by God (1Corinthians 2:12). God’s divine order is not that one highly gifted person has massive insight into the wealth of heaven and everyone else has to receive it from them. No. God calls us all to know the things He has freely given to us. His strategy is not to give insight simply to a select few and then they dictate to everybody else what He is saying. That is how the Old Testament worked. In the New Testament, He has poured out His presence in all of us. And when He speaks in our midst, we all bear witness to what He is saying and doing.
For example, when the prophets and teachers in the church at Antioch were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2). Scripture does not say who actually gave that prophetic word. But it seems that the whole church responded with fasting and prayer, and then laid their hands on them and then “sent them away”. The Greek word (APOLUO) actually means they released them. To be clear, it was not an individual leader who made this decision nor was it an organizational committee that implemented it. The next verse says, “So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 13:4). Interestingly, the Greek word here for “being sent out” is (EKPEMPO) meaning to “send forth.” So, the people of God released the men that the Holy Spirit was sending on His mission. But through it all, it was the Holy Spirit operating in and through His people that resulted in this strategic apostolic mission.
What we see in this event was the whole church being apostolic and prophetic. All were involved in hearing the Lord, bearing witness with what He was saying, and then releasing into strategic ministry those whom the Lord was sending. The mission field would then be the proving grounds for whether Paul and Barnabas were actually apostles or not. And when they returned from their journey, they assembled the whole church and then gave an account of the work that they had accomplished (Acts 14:26 - 28). Notice that they did not report to a committee. These men were not part of an organization. They did not function according to some official titles that they held. They were simply men filled with the Holy Spirit walking together with many others who were also filled with the Spirit who had recognized the work of God in them. They had been sent by the Holy Spirit, they were led while on their journey by the Holy Spirit, and they returned to give an account for what He had accomplished through them.
which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ.
Think about it: Noah looked foolish building an ark where there had been no rain; Sarah looked foolish believing that she would conceive at the age of ninety; Moses looked foolish asking Pharaoh to let his slaves go free; the Israelite army looked foolish marching around Jericho while blowing trumpets; David looked foolish attacking Goliath with a sling shot; the wisemen looked foolish following a star; Peter looked foolish stepping out of a boat in the middle of a storm; and Jesus looked foolish hanging half naked on a cross.
But look at the results. Noah and his family stayed afloat during a massive and destructive flood; Sarah gave birth to Isaac; Moses delivered Israel out of Egypt; the walls of Jericho came tumbling down; David defeated Goliath; the wisemen found the Messiah; Peter walked on water; and Jesus rose from the dead.
And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men? For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not mere men? What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.
Sometimes we struggle with these verses. Those who plant and water are nothing? Yes. When it comes to making things grow in God’s kingdom, we are totally dependent on Him. And our tendency is that if we do not walk in harmony with the Holy Spirit, we will align ourselves with men – just like the Corinthians had. We will want to follow somebody who sounds like they have it all together and who seems quite successful in Christian ministry. Then we can say, “Yeah, that’s us. We’re with him.” But that isn’t us! We are simply who we are. When we look in the mirror, what do we see? Not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble, but a people weak and foolish in ourselves, a people made from the dust of the ground yet filled with the Holy Spirit. God’s way of accomplishing His purpose using the people that He has chosen to work with will have the result of Him getting the glory.
Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Paul was well versed in laws and rules. He had tried religious devotion and legalistic activities. But nothing worked. However, when he embraced what he was most afraid of – the person of Jesus Christ, the Lord came into his life and changed him from the inside out. Again, after meeting Him, he had to unlearn and then relearn. But as he did so, he became powerful in the Spirit. When he then went to minister at Corinth, he didn’t go there with persuasive words but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power so that their faith would not rest on man’s wisdom but on the power of God (1Corinthians 2:3 - 4).
A New Testament Prophet’s primary service to the Body of Christ is to equip men and women to live their lives on the foundation of Jesus Christ – to learn to hear Him. And then once they have equipped people through instruction and then through practice in learning to hear His voice, the people can then build upon that foundation by living a life of intimate response to what He is saying. Notice Jesus’ own words.
Why do you call Me, “Lord, Lord,” and do not do what I say? Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I will show you whom he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on the rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.
My friend Mike Worsley was a minister for 30 years. He knew that he was called to be a prophet but leaders in the various churches where he had served limited him in what he could say or do. He knew that God was calling His people to come into intimacy with Himself, so Mike preached and prophesied words that God gave him on that theme regularly. But it began to dawn on him that the people did not know how to actually get on the foundation and then live there. And he was not sure how to equip them to do so. Then, like Saul of Tarsus, he ran into Jesus Christ. That experience literally set him free, and he now functions in a freedom that he had previously only dreamed about. He now sees God’s strategy of equipping folks to get on the foundation and to hear from the Lord for themselves. Once they are established on the foundation, they no longer have to rely on him to know what the Spirit is saying. Establishing people on Christ has released Mike to be all that God has called him to be as well as those he has been training to be all that God has called them to be.
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