What is Prophecy and Who Can be a Prophet?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.  Here is this week’s question: Dear Dave and Tom, I’m fascinated with prophecy, but I want to get a handle on some fundamentals.What is prophecy?What is its primary function?Who’s to do it and is it still something to be done today?

Tom:

Dave you have a tape “The God of Prophecy” and it’s a terrific tape and in past programs we’ve talked about in regard to validating, authenticating, showing people how it is that God’s Word is what it claims to be—God’s Word; that it is supernatural. Prophecy is one of the main characteristics of it.

Dave:

Yes, I would say it is the main characteristic, because God himself says I will tell you what is going to happen before it happens.Prophecy comes from God.Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.No prophecy is of any private interpretation and so forth.So if God speaks through a human being I would have no quarrel with that.Now God has spoken, it says, he has spoken in times past, Hebrews 1, through the prophets and now these last days he has spoken unto us through his Son.Jesus Christ came, this is the revelation of God and the prophets foretold his coming.Now what else is there to prophesy?The Bible has foretold the Antichrist, the Rapture, the Great Tribulation, the coming events—it goes into great details.Now so if we are talking about some prophet arising and suddenly Tom on this program you start saying—first of all you couldn’t prophesy yourself, from your own heart.You would have to say “thus saith the Lord.”Now you know Benny Hinn has said that many times and given us false prophecies.In 1989 he said during the 90s there wouldn’t be a place in America that would be safe from earthquakes.He said God would destroy the homosexual community by fire by 1994 or 95 at the latest, we could go on [with more] false prophecies.But he claimed that God was speaking through him.Obviously God was not, because God doesn’t make mistakes.So if you start to prophesy here Tom and you say thus saith the Lord—you would have to say that—it’s not coming from your brain or your understanding.

Well, God gives us, I think, seven marks of a false prophet.The first one is in Deuteronomy 13, “If a prophet arises and he offers a sign and it even comes to pass, but he leads you after other Gods….”Then Deuteronomy 18 you have the second mark of a false prophet: what he says doesn’t come to pass, well that’s Benny Hinn over and over and over and why don’t people recognize that and why is he not rebuked?Jerry Falwell for example went to his 25^th anniversary of his ministry and praised him as a great man of God.Why isn’t he rebuked for his false prophecies?Why doesn’t Paul Crouch for example, or Oral Roberts who would be on the set with him there at TBN?Why don’t they—look, what am I saying?Tom, I am only giving the facts.Now if we are going to blind our eyes to the facts and we are going to say, “Don’t confuse me with facts, my mind is made up.”These are the facts.We offer a book for example in our ministry, The Confusing World of Benny Hinn.It will document exactly what this man has been doing; the false prophecies, the bizarre comments from the Bible, but the children of Israel—well he says the Red Sea frozen and the ice came down and smashed the Egyptians.No, it says they drown.It doesn’t say that and he gives you so many bizarre, false interpretations of the Bible over and over and over.Okay, now let’s just face the facts.Benny, face the facts, you are a false prophet.Now why do not church leaders stand up and say now this is wrong.Now we are talking about prophecy.Tom if you start saying something that’s not of God, and you say thus saith the Lord; I will rebuke you right on radio.That should be done.So now we have a question.I guess the question is, “Could there be prophets today.Well God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.If God wants to speak through some prophet and really say something that would be up to Him.But we have a lot of phonies claiming God speaks through them and there would have to be some reason for it and I think the Bible gives us all the information we need.

Tom:

But Dave, as you know, you go through the scriptures, not all prophecy is predictive.

Dave:

That’s right.

Tom:

It’s revealing God’s heart, it’s giving instruction about living in righteousness, it could be rebuking, correcting somebody.

Dave:

But the Bible has all of that we need, so it would be speaking forth from the Word of God.In fact Tom, Peter said, “If any man speak, anybody, you or I, as we are speaking on the radio now, “…let him speak as the oracles of God,” by the grace that God gives.So we should be whatever we say, it should be in the fear of the Lord, knowing we are not just talking to men, but we are speaking before God and we better be certain that it its true and it is true to the Word of God.So every person who ever speaks for God in that.And even exegeting the Bible, in that sense is speaking prophetically, because they are taking the words of God and applying them.And that’s one sense in which prophecy would be for today.

Tom:

Yes, do you think that’s what Paul had in mind?He said you know, let everyone prophesy.

Dave:

Let the prophets speak two or three by chorus, if something is revealed to another, let the first go that speaks.You may all prophesy, right, 1 Corinthians 14, I think that was what he was talking about.

Tom:

Right, but for somebody to step forth, either whether they are forth telling or telling forth, however you want to look at it, doctrine is set.The Bible, the Word of God is what we use to judge whether somebody is speaking according God’s Word; whether they are prophesying in the sense of sharing information with regard to, or correction, or whatever it might be.God’s Word is our reference.

Dave:

And if it isn’t biblical we have to judge it by the Word of God and that is not being judgmental.That’s just having some common sense and if it doesn’t happen when they claim that its going to happen we know God has not spoken.They have spoken presumptuously the scripture says, claiming to represent God when they don’t.