In my last article, I shared my conviction that while many sincere Christians practise “the gift of tongues”, it’s difficult to conclude that the modern phenomenon is the same gift presented in Scripture.
And I’m not alone in this conviction. Some 150 to 300 million Christians worldwide hold to a cessationist position in relation to tongues. And while modern continuationism has grown rapidly over the past century, the overwhelming majority of Christians throughout church history lived before the rise of Pentecostalism in 1901. For most of Christian history, the expectation that tongues were a normative feature of church life wasn’t the dominant position.
Continuationists, however, don’t just believe that tongues are still for today. They also believe in the ongoing prophetic gifting, revelatory words of knowledge, healing ministries, and – in some circles – the office of apostle and apostolic ministries.
Like tongues, prophecy was something which would one day cease (1 Corinthians 13:8). As I noted in my previous article, there’s not just one interpretation of when that might be, and none which entirely satisfy the context and tone of the entire passage. So, as with tongues, the more relevant question isn’t whether prophecy still exists today – we have to grant the possibility that the “the perfect” Paul referred to hasn’t yet arrived – but whether the modern-day expressions and practices of it accurately reflect what’s seen in Scripture.
However, unlike tongues, Scripture also places prophecy within the very foundation of the church, alongside the apostles, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20). That means prophecy has a unique and foundational role that must be accounted for. It wasn’t merely a general ministry of encouragement or spiritual insight, but part of the revelatory foundation upon which the church was built. This may give further shape to what Paul might have meant when he said that prophecy would pass away when “the perfect” comes.
It’s important to note that prophecy existed long before Acts 2. Prophecy, in the biblical narrative, was already a major part of God’s dealings with His people, the way in which He revealed both Himself and His purposes. It wasn’t limited to foretelling future events, as we sometimes think, but encompassed far more. Prophecy was the word of the Lord, giving covenant warnings, promises, rebukes, and Messianic hope. A prophet was the mouthpiece or spokesperson of that word. In that way, prophecy was real, authoritative, Spirit-empowered, and centred on God making His word known.
The first prophet named in Scripture is, surprisingly, Abraham (Genesis 20:7). However, when we understand the biblical meaning of prophecy and prophet, we begin to see why Abraham was defined as a prophet.
Abraham receives direct revelation repeatedly from God. God calls him out of Ur and promises to make him a great nation (Genesis 12:1-3). God speaks covenant promises to him (Genesis 15). God gives him the sign of circumcision (Genesis 17). God reveals the coming judgement on Sodom (Genesis 18:17-19). In fact, that moment in Genesis 18 is especially important. God says: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Genesis 18:17). That’s prophetic language in seed form. Abraham is being brought into the counsel of God, and God reveals His purposes to him. Abraham is a prophet because he is a man to whom God speaks and reveals Himself.
Genesis 20 also connects Abraham’s prophetic role to intercession, that is, he stands before God on behalf of another person. And this can be seen with other prophets in the biblical narrative. Moses intercedes for Israel after their sin (Exodus 32:11-14). Samuel prays for the people (1 Samuel 12:23). Jeremiah is even told not to pray for Judah anymore, which only makes sense because prophetic prayer was part of his role (Jeremiah 7:16). Amos pleads with God over judgment (Amos 7:1-6).
So a prophet isn’t only someone who speaks God’s word to people. A prophet may also stand before God on behalf of people. Abraham, the first person to be named a prophet, does both across his life. He receives God’s revelatory word, and he intercedes before God.
So biblical prophecy isn’t merely “telling the future.” Prediction can be part of prophecy, but it’s not the core of it. Nor is it a vague “I think the Lord said”, or “I feel you should”, or “I sense God might be saying.” In Scripture, prophecy carries far more weight than spiritual impressions or sanctified guesswork.
A prophet speaks because God has revealed. The message doesn’t rest on intuition, emotion, or personal insight, but on the authority of the God who speaks.
Prophecy Is The Revelation Of God
At the heart of prophecy is this: God makes Himself and His will known through a chosen human messenger. With Abraham, that looks like covenant promise and intercession. With Moses, it becomes more formal and public. With Isaiah and Jeremiah, it becomes covenant preaching, warning, judgement, and hope. With John the Baptist, it becomes direct witness to the arrival of Christ. And in Christ himself, the prophetic office reaches its fulfilment, because Jesus isn’t merely one who brings the word of God. He is the Word made flesh (John 1:1, 14).
The writer of Hebrews makes the point: “Long ago, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets at many times and in many ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also He made the world.”
This point is really important for any discussion about prophecy. God did speak through the prophets in many ways before Christ, but the final, climactic revelation is in His Son. Jesus isn’t just another prophet in the line. He is the fulfilment and climax of all prophetic revelation.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that prophecy disappeared the moment Jesus’ mission was concluded. The early church still had prophets, because the church was living in that unique and unrepeatable moment between the finished work of Christ and the completed apostolic witness Acts 11:27-28, Acts 13:1, Acts 21:10-11).
The Saviour had come, the Spirit had been poured out, the gospel was moving from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth, and the New Testament Scriptures were still being written, received, and circulated. In that foundational period, prophets served the church by bearing Spirit-given witness to Christ, warning, strengthening, directing, and confirming the work of the gospel under the authority of the apostolic message.
But that’s exactly the point. New Testament prophecy belonged to the foundation-laying age of the church. Paul says the household of God is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20, 3:5). A foundation is laid at the beginning so the building can rise upon it (1 Corinthians 3:10-11). It’s not continually relaid throughout the life of the building.
Once the apostolic and prophetic foundation had been laid, and the witness to Christ had been given, preserved, and written down, the church no longer needed ongoing prophetic revelation. It isn’t left waiting for fresh revelation to complete or direct its faith. It’s called to build faithfully upon the once-for-all foundation already given in Christ, through the apostolic word, now preserved for us in Scripture.
So the question is whether it makes biblical sense to expect that same revelatory gift to reappear today, long after the foundation has already been laid. After the completion of the foundation (possibly “the perfect” that Paul referred to), isn’t it reasonable to conclude that the function and necessity of prophecy has now terminated? To say otherwise is to conclude that revelation isn’t complete but rather ongoing, a premise not supported by the historical witness or Scripture itself.
What To Make Of Modern Day Prophets
So what do we make of modern-day prophets? If prophecy, biblically understood, is revelation from God through a human messenger, then the category can’t simply be transferred onto anyone who speaks boldly, preaches faithfully, exposes sin, encourages the church, or declares the truth about Jesus. These things matter, but Scripture already gives us words for them. We call them preaching, teaching, exhortation, evangelism, pastoral counsel, discernment, and encouragement.
This is where much of the modern confusion begins. Sometimes people say that prophecy simply means “speaking God’s truth,” or “declaring the truth of Jesus into a situation.” But that definition is too thin. By that standard, every faithful sermon, every gospel conversation, every Bible study, and every word of Christian encouragement could be called prophecy.
As we’ve already seen, prophets weren’t merely people who said true things about God. They were people who spoke the revealed word of God. Their authority came not from the force of their personality or the usefulness of their insight, but from the fact that God had spoken.
So if someone today is declaring the gospel, calling sinners to repentance, comforting the church with Scripture, or applying the truth of Christ to the present age, we should be encouraged by that. But we should call it what the Bible calls it. It’s preaching. It’s teaching. It’s evangelism. It’s exhortation. It’s the Spirit working through the already revealed word of God.
What we shouldn’t do is blur those categories and call it prophecy, because biblical prophecy carries the weight of divine revelation. And if there is no new revelation, then there are no new prophets in the biblical sense.
Theological issues aside, this is why orthodox Christianity has rejected the Book of Mormon. The church has long believed and taught that, with the completion of the canon of Scripture, no new revelation was given or should be expected. That’s another whole conversation in itself, but the principle matters here. The church today lives beyond the apostolic age as the recipient and guardian of the once-for-all faith delivered to the saints. (Jude 3).
While God is certainly not distant, and remains active in the affairs of humanity, He has made Himself and His saving purposes fully known in Jesus Christ. The church therefore doesn’t wait for a further word to complete what has already been revealed, but faithfully receives, proclaims, and obeys the apostolic witness preserved for us in Scripture.
The Issue Of Fallibility
Today, many would-be prophets are invited to attend “prophetic schools”, where they can supposedly learn to prophesy, practise receiving words from God, and are encouraged to “give it a go”, even if they get it wrong. Others are taught to begin with an impression, image, feeling, or thought, then deliver it cautiously with phrases such as, “I sense the Lord may be saying” or “I feel this could be for someone here.”
But this bears little resemblance to biblical prophecy. In Scripture, prophecy wasn’t a skill developed through experimentation, nor was error treated as an acceptable part of the learning process. Prophets spoke because God had revealed His word to them. Their message carried weight precisely because it came from God.
There was no biblical category of the fallible prophet. There was only the genuine prophet and the false prophet. The genuine prophet spoke the revealed word of God and was therefore true, because God doesn’t speak falsely. The false prophet claimed divine authority for words God had not given.
In the Old Testament, false prophecy was treated with the utmost seriousness (Deuteronomy 13:1-5, Deuteronomy 18:20-22, Jeremiah 23). Under the law, false prophets faced death because they had presumed to speak in the name of the Lord. In the New Testament, the church is instructed to test prophecies, not in order to separate the accurate parts from the nearly accurate parts but to distinguish genuine revelation from falsehood (Matthew 7:15, 1 Corinthians 14:29, 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21, 1 John 4:1).
There is therefore no biblical basis for practising prophecy until someone becomes better at it. Prophecy isn’t a skill developed through trial and error. To be genuine prophecy, it must be true, and true in every single instance, because genuine prophecy comes directly from God. A message that contains error is not a prophetic word from the Lord.
What About Modern Day Apostles?
Throughout most of church history, no one could simply adopt the title “apostle” and expect to be taken seriously by the wider church. As with prophecy, the apostles belonged to the foundational era of the church, and the New Testament presents apostleship as a unique and authoritative office rather than a title available to any gifted leader.
Several clear criteria had to be met, including having seen the risen Christ, having been personally commissioned by him, and bearing the signs of an apostle (Acts 1:21-22, 1 Corinthians 9:1, 2 Corinthians 12:12). Apostles weren’t merely successful church planters, influential pastors, or charismatic leaders. They were authorised witnesses of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, whose teaching helped form the doctrinal foundation of the church.
This is also why some writings were excluded from the canon of Scripture while others were received. They didn’t bear the marks of genuine apostolic authority. The early church didn’t simply accept every text that claimed spiritual insight or attached an apostle’s name to its title. Writings were weighed according to their connection to the apostles, their consistency with the faith already received, and their recognition across the churches. Those that lacked apostolic origin or authority weren’t accepted as part of the church’s foundational witness. That’s not to say that they weren’t useful, but only that they didn’t carry apostolic and therefore foundational weight.
Again, as with prophecy, to affirm ongoing apostleship in the church today is to imply that the foundation is still being laid, that authoritative revelation is still being given, and that the Scriptures we already possess are not yet sufficient as the final rule for faith and life.
Recent attempts to redefine this as the foundation of each individual believer’s faith have no serious footing in the historic interpretation of the passage. Paul is describing one household, one building, and one holy temple, established upon the apostolic and prophetic foundation with Christ as its cornerstone.
The historic disagreement concerned whether that foundation was the apostles and prophets themselves or the authoritative doctrine they delivered, not whether every generation required new apostles to lay it again. This interpretation functions as a modern rescue argument for an office the church historically understood to be foundational and unrepeatable
To introduce new apostles with comparable authority is therefore not a harmless extension of ministry language. It unsettles the finality of the apostolic witness and leaves the church open to fresh claims of revelation beyond what has already been delivered. In doing so, it undermines the authority and sufficiency of Scripture itself.
Those who title themselves “apostles” today aren’t displaying biblical restraint. The title doesn’t belong to ambitious pastors, magnetic leaders, successful church planters, or anyone with a large platform and a loyal following. It belongs to the unique witnesses appointed by Christ for the foundation of his church.
Whatever the motives involved, the modern recovery of apostolic titles, often seen in circles promoting the fivefold ministry framework, introduces the very dangers the New Testament repeatedly warns against: status, concentrated spiritual authority, personal loyalty, and claims of superior access to God. Yet the title is often adopted casually, announced publicly, and used to lend extraordinary weight to a leader or ministry. That isn’t a harmless difference in terminology. It’s a serious act of presumption.
Where To From Here?
I think many people sincerely interpret Scripture through a lens that leads them to believe these titles or offices carry a different meaning today from the authority they carried in the early church. Yet that lens is applied inconsistently and ultimately gives these offices a meaning far different from the one Scripture itself provides. This isn’t ultimately a question of whether everyone claiming to be a prophet or apostle is consciously deceptive. God alone knows the heart. The question is whether such claims deserve the confidence of the church. They do not.
Anyone who adopts these titles is claiming a level of divine authority, revelation, and spiritual weight that Scripture doesn’t permit the church to recognise today. At best, the claim reveals serious biblical confusion. At worst, it creates the conditions for manipulation, spiritual intimidation, and abuse.
Either way, Christians shouldn’t respond with openness or admiration or even indifference, but with deep caution.
The church should be especially wary of ministries built around prophetic words, apostolic titles, private revelations, spiritual rankings, or claims of special access to or “grace from” God. These aren’t harmless differences in language. They place human voices dangerously close to and even above the authority of Scripture and encourage believers to trust personalities, impressions, and experiences that can’t bear the weight placed upon them.
Our confidence shouldn’t rest in modern “prophets”, self-appointed “apostles”, or charismatic claims to fresh revelation. It must rest in Jesus Christ and in the apostolic word already given. The faithful church isn’t the one chasing the newest word from God, but the one firmly anchored in the word God has already spoken.
