THIS IS PART OF AN ONGOING SERIES ON THE GIFT OF PROPHECY. Click here for the rest of the series.
From the Old to the New…
As we understand the paradigm shift from gift-based to presence-based, we can begin to put into place some common misunderstandings of prophecy. In a gift based dynamic we will tend to look at the most excellently gifted to understand the function of prophetic ministry. Hence the focus upon Old Testament prophets and their function. But within the scope of prophetic ministry there will few called to speak into national and international situations. The call as a prophet to the nations is the exception and not the rule.
For those who have followed the Charismatic Renewal, we have made certain magnanimous figures to be the examples. Men and women who were known for the visions they shared publicly and the prophetic words they gave on a national stage became the examples. Anyone who sensed some call to public ministry then needed to register a website and speak into national issues regardless of whether people were listening. But the mark of a prophet in the Old Testament was that people respected and listened regardless whether they agreed.
However, there is a large distinction between the relatively few prophets in the Old Testament and the New Testament statement:
1 Corinthians 14:31 For you can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be encouraged.
The function of the prophets of the Old Testament and the prophets and prophecy in the New Testament has shifted so dramatically that it is almost unrecognizable.
The first large gap is that nearly every Old Testament prophet pointed forward to Christ to reveal the mystery of God hidden from the foundation of the world. The Old Testament prophets were speaking towards a mystery that had yet to be revealed. That mystery has now been directly revealed in the person of Christ.
Simply put, the main thrust of Old Testament prophecy is to reveal the mystery of Christ. We see this demonstrated directly by Jesus to the disciples on their journey to Emmaus. As they discuss what has just happened to Jesus (His death), they are joined by Him and do not recognize Him. They fill Jesus in on all the details concerning Himself (God seems to have a sense of humor). And Jesus responds:
Luke 24:25-27 Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
The law and prophets point to Jesus.
Jesus takes special care to show the disciples how the prophets of old foreshadowed his coming. He even says that Abraham spent his life anticipating the revelation of Christ:
John 8:56 Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.
Abraham also happens to be the first called a prophet in all of scripture. Old Testament prophets pointed to the mystery of Christ:
“In the Old Testament, they were called Seers, because they saw what others saw not, and surveyed things hidden in mystery.”
The early church fathers saw the interpretive principle of prophecy in the Old Testament to be Jesus. Once this is noticed you can hardly road the Old Testament without seeing a passage referring to the mystery of Christ’s coming. Of course, not every prophetic utterance speaks to this, but you can hardly get past a couple of chapters in any book without seeing a direct or indirect reference to Jesus.
Jesus quotes the first verse and a half from Isaiah 61 while in the temple and the first verse from Psalm 22 while on the cross to demonstrate this principle:
Luke 4:17-20 And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord .” Then He closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him.
Psalms 22:1a My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
Both are prophecies about the coming messiah, and not just the first verses but the whole chapters. If we understood that Jesus was not saying that the Father had actually abandoned him on the cross but that the whole of Psalm 22 was being fulfilled in their midst (much the same as Isaiah 61) we would do ourselves good to understand the presence of God in the midst of suffering.
So much of our confusion with New Testament prophecy is that we have taken too much of our example from the Old Testament prophets.
Jesus states that the law and prophets prophecy up until John:
Matthew 11:13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.
To which Jerome, an early church father responded:
“This should not exclude the prophets who came after John the Baptist, for we read in the Acts of the Apostles that Agabus and Philip’s four young unmarried daughters uttered prophecies. But insofar as the law and prophets of the Scriptures looked toward the future, they prophesied about our Lord. So when it is written, ‘All the prophets and the law up to the time of John have prophesied,’ the time of Christ is made known as those previous voices had said it would come. Then John showed he had come.”
And Thomas Aquinas makes the distinction between Old and New Testament prophets:
“…and at all times there have not been lacking persons having the spirit of prophecy, not indeed for the declaration of any new doctrine of faith, but for the direction of human acts.”
Old Testament prophecy by and large revealed the mystery of Christ, and it thus part of the canon of Scripture, then New Testament prophecy could never been seen in the same light as Old Testament prophecy. Any prophetic utterance coming after the coming of Christ would have a fundamentally different purpose than anything that occurred before Him. New Testament prophecy could never been seen as being part and parcel with scripture because it has such a vastly different function that the prophets of the Old.
So then, If Old Testament prophecy by and large pointed to the mystery of God revealed in Christ, what does New Testament prophecy consist of? If Old Testament prophecy pointed forward to the mystery, New Testament prophecy points back to the revelation.
To be continued…