What is the gift of prophecy? Should Christians seek that gift today? Does God still raise up prophets in the church? Is New Testament prophecy different than Old Testament prophecy? In this two-part podcast, pastors Derek Brown and Cliff McManis address these important questions and more as they discuss the century-long disagreement between cessationists and continuationists.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to With All Wisdom. My name is Derek Brown and I am here today again with Cliff McManis. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California. We both are professors at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And today we’re going to do part two in our talk on prophecy. You can check out part number one in episode 20. You can find that at withallwisdom.org and we just encourage you to check out withallwisdom.org. A lot of helpful resources there to help you in your walk with the Lord and help you grow theologically and biblically in your knowledge of the Lord. And we also just recently released a new book, The Parable of Sports, by JR Cueves. We encourage you to check that out. An excellent little book, easy to read, about how sports serve as a metaphor of the Christian life, but also serve as a means of discipleship for families and for individual athletes. And so today we want to again touch on what we started last week, with this discussion of the gift of prophecy. We’re going to broaden it out a little bit to talk about the broader disagreement between continuationists and cessationists, but we are going to go back to this discussion. We think it’s very important to define terms. In fact, that’s what we’re going to be doing today, is talking about definitions and the changing of definitions and how important it is to remain biblical in our definitions of theological terms. And so I just want to hand it right back over to you, Cliff, and let’s get it started from where we left off from last time.
Cliff: Yeah, if I were to ask you as a Christian out there, whoever’s listening, are you a continuationist or a cessationist? And there’s probably a lot of Christians who don’t even know what we’re talking about. It is important. I know theologians make these big old words with a lot of syllables, but that’s what we want to talk about. So in layman’s terms and the modern vernacular, I guess we could say this is part two of what is prophecy. We’re just trying to define prophecy according to the Bible. It is a spiritual gift, as mentioned in the New Testament. It’s also in the Old Testament. So just to simplify things and not be scared by all those big scary terms. What is prophecy? We need to understand it biblically and also under this big umbrella of continuationism and cessationism. Really what we’re talking about are the sign gifts or the miraculous gifts. And you and I, Derek, we just last week taught for three days, eight hours a day, a seminary master’s degree level class and elective. And it was literally on what are the sign gifts or the sign gifts for today. The textbook, one of them we used and walked through was our miraculous gifts for today. Four views, four different views by professed evangelical Christians. And basically you had the cessationist who says that prophecy and the sign gifts ceased with the apostles in the New Testament in the first century. And then most of the other guys were continuationists, charismatic, Pentecostal background, arguing that the spiritual gifts, the sign gifts have continued beyond the first century, beyond the apostles, even all throughout church history. And they’re going on today. As a matter of fact, they should be normative today. What we saw in the Old Testament regarding miracles and wonders and what we saw with Jesus and his miracles and the apostles, we should be seeing that going on today. And a lot of these guys claim that that is going on today. And I would say, no, it’s not going on today, as would you, because we’re cessationists. And under that umbrella of being a cessationist, we would say that prophecy is not going on today the way it was in New Testament times. Or these other sign gifts, these nine or 10 miraculous gifts, miracles, the gift of apostleship, those kind of things. We believe they had a purpose and they truly did happen. Speaking in tongues is one of those main ones that was served at a historic time as God was laying the foundation of his church. So that’s kind of the background. I’ve got so much to say as do you, so who knows how much we’re going to cover in this session, but that’s okay.
But as we read through that 400 page book on our miraculous gifts for today, and then we actually interacted with some of the authors of that book. And the majority of the authors argue in their book that if you’re talking about, is prophecy still around today or did it cease with the New Testament times? It was interesting they said, you can’t use 1 Corinthians 13, Mr. Cessationist, to make your point. And then they just never talked about it because they kept making the statement over and over again. Well, actually, if you read the Bible carefully, the Bible never says, the New Testament never says, that prophecy will cease or that the sign gifts will cease. They repeatedly kept saying that in the book. And I’m thinking, no, it does. The Bible does specifically say that some of the sign gifts will cease at some point. So we can’t just ignore it and gloss over it. So to make it clear, I wanted to read this verse because it’s pretty clear. 1 Corinthians 13 is in a context where Paul’s talking about the spiritual gifts, including the sign gifts, and he makes a prophecy about prophecy in 1 Corinthians 13:8. And Paul’s prophecy through the Holy Spirit, and he says categorically, prophecy will be done away. Katargeō (καταργέω) is the Greek word. Prophecy will be abolished. Prophecy will be caused to end. Prophecy is going to cease. Prophecy is going to come into nonexistence. In that verse, he doesn’t say when, but we’ve got to face the fact that it literally says, at some point, prophecy will be done away. So you cannot just keep saying over and over again, like some of them do in their writings. Well, the Bible never says that the spiritual gifts are going to cease. Well, actually, it does. Right there, in 1 Corinthians 13:8. Prophecy will be done away. Not only that, it says tongues will cease. That’s a different Greek verb. In the Middle Voice, it will cease in and of itself. Literally, at some point, Paul said tongues is going to fizzle out into nonexistence. And then he says finally that the gift of knowledge, which is the word of knowledge, that’s the spiritual gift that he just mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12. The word of knowledge, not just human knowledge in general, he’s saying the gift of the word of knowledge that I just mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, now I’m telling you in 1 Corinthians 13, 8, that the gift of the word of knowledge, which was a prophetic gift where God gave direct revelation to his people, he also says that is going to be done away as well using the same verb he just used on prophecy. So just wanted to make that point emphatic and clear. The New Testament does, in fact, say or predict or prophesy that some of the spiritual gifts will go into nonexistence at some point. And then the debate is over when. And we could also argue that the Bible makes it clear that the gift of apostleship is going to cease as well, and apostleship was a signed gift, a foundational gift. And we know that the Bible clearly says that the gift of apostleship will be done away with or cease because of the qualifications to be an apostle. You had to be alive during the ministry of Jesus. You have to have witnessed his resurrection. There’s nobody around that has done that. You had to be personally commissioned by Jesus himself to be an apostle. Therefore, that gift has clearly ceased. But continuationists, charismatics believe that there are apostles today and that there’s prophecy today. And so that’s just a little background definition. And by way of reminder, we read last time what the traditional biblical definition of prophecy is that we don’t want to veer from that prophecy is direct communication from God’s spirit. Prophecy declares God’s mind. Prophecy is God speaking, direct revelation. Literally, it’s a prophecy is God’s words, or that phrase in the Bible, God said, thus saith the Lord. And when God speaks, he never makes a mistake. When God speaks, it’s always authoritative. It’s infallible. It is binding. He is perfect. God cannot lie. That definition cannot change. So now we want to explore your thesis, Derek, and analysis was that, boy, one of the problems is that as we’re talking with a continuationist, I don’t know if we’re necessarily agreeing on the definitions here, which it’s always difficult to have a conversation or debate with anybody if you don’t agree on bottom line definitions.
Derek: Exactly. You’ll talk past each other.
Cliff: You will. Yeah. We’re on AM frequency. They’re on FM. No wonder we’re not getting anywhere. So we want to establish what we think are clear biblical definitions and talk about how they’ve been nuanced and changed in really important ways. So I wanted to first get us going on how the definition of prophecy has changed. And that would be that Wayne Grudem, who we refer to, wrote his PhD actually at Cambridge University in 1978, and it was on prophecy, and specifically 1 Corinthians 12 through 14. So he got that PhD approved. And then four years later in 1982, he actually wrote a book out of that PhD. It was called basically prophecy and the definition of prophecy in light of 1 Corinthians 13. And then that’s when he popularized his view. And that’s when he introduced to the evangelical Christian world this new definition of prophecy going against the historic definition that you and I have been talking about. And he’s not shy about it. He wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he was giving a new definition of prophecy. Here’s a quote from Wayne Grudem talking about his new definition. He says, quote, my somewhat new definition. He shouldn’t have said somewhat because it’s categorically new. My somewhat new definition of the nature of Christian prophecy. And that was based on his book, The Gift of Prophecy in 1 Corinthians, page 15, back in 1982 and 1988, the reprint. So at least he was honest and said, I am introducing a new definition of prophecy. We need to understand it in a new way. And here it is. We are almost 2,000 years into the church age. We got our Bible. And that’s always a red flag to me when somebody comes along and says, oh, I got some new truth. Oh, you guys missed it. The church has missed it. The reformers missed it. All of church history. So I’ve got to give you a new truth. He actually also says that, well, actually the correct definition was around up until about the second century. And then it got smothered by the traditions of the church and neglect from giving attention to the proper definition. And so we’re talking about 1978 to 1982, just this radical shift in evangelical Christianity of understanding the definition of prophecy in a new way. Here’s another quote from Wayne Grudem. Well, how did he redefine it? Well, he is saying that New Testament prophecy is not the same as Old Testament prophecy, where I would say, yeah, it is. It’s of the same nature, same definition. And Wayne Grudem saying, no, it’s not. Here’s his definition. Quote, I am asking those in the cessationist camp, me and you and others, to give serious thought to the possibility that prophecy in ordinary New Testament churches, based on 1 Corinthians 14, prophecy in ordinary New Testament churches was not equal to scripture in authority.
Derek: Wow.
Cliff: Yes. And furthermore, it was simply a very human and sometimes partially mistaken report of something the Holy Spirit brought to someone’s mind, end quote. So expand on your wow there, Derek, on that. There’s two things there that New Testament prophecy is not equal to scripture and authority. And then also it was simply a very human and sometimes partially mistaken report of something that the Holy Spirit brought. So the authority and then it’s got mistakes.
Derek: Yeah. So again, with something we’ve touched on in the first episode and something that I’ve even started to do myself in terms of just looking at every text in the Old and New Testament that refer to the prophet, to a prophet, to prophecy as an actual act and then prophecy as the final revelation that’s been given, the product. Looking at text and there’s just the avalanche of texts that clearly define prophecy as direct revelation from God that has inherent divine authority that is never wrong. It’s an overwhelming avalanche. And I’m looking at text after text after text after text so that when you come to hear something like that, it’s very jarring, actually, because I can’t conceive of that kind of definition given what I see in scripture as a clear and steady and constant definition from Genesis through to Revelation. And so it’s just a jarring statement because it’s not coherent with what you see in scripture. And then the idea that God can give something that’s, and this is where as you and I have challenged others who believe these things, it gets even more confusing when you try to parse out, okay, is the direct revelation from God inherent? Yes. Okay. Then the person that’s giving it, they might screw up? Yes. Okay. So that’s prophecy? Yes. So what part am I supposed to listen to? And it’s just very muddy and confusing.
Cliff: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting what you just said there, because when I asked Sam Storms recently, like a week ago, personally, that very question, personally, I said, is the direct revelation, step one, is the direct revelation step, is that the authoritative infallible Word of God? He didn’t say yes.
Derek: Wow.
Cliff: He said, first, he said no. Then I had to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, let’s do that again. And his answer was no. And I said, well, why is that? Well, because it could be interpreted incorrectly. I said, no, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about the interpretation of it or the application. Step one. Let’s go back to step one. Is the direct revelation from God given directly to the prophet, is that authoritative, infallible, the very Word of God? And bottom line, he just didn’t answer the question. And I think that’s one of the, that’s the crux of the issue.
Derek: It is. It is. And that’s why you have to really pinpoint that issue. Yep. And I think what, as I’ve gone through these texts, the question I keep asking and want to put this together in an article to really, to really give weight to this, to these arguments, is the question I think that the continuation has to answer, which I don’t think they have even come close to satisfactorily answering, is on what biblical grounds do you have to change the definition? Now, they offer some biblical arguments, but I have yet to see an actual biblical textual exegetical argument or theological argument where they say, these are the grounds. This is how scripture does it. This is how scripture changes the definition, and this is how you can know. This is how Luke or the other gospel writers or the New Testament writers, this is how they signal the change. You just, they don’t have a warrant. They don’t have an exegetical or a theological warrant to change the definition of prophecy.
Cliff: That’s a great, great point, because if you were to ask the question, when did it change? Where’s the warrant to change? When was that introduced so that everybody’s on the same page, that there has been a change? Because God graciously does that in Acts chapter 10. When there was a change about what you could eat, God made it clear. Here’s a sheet coming down from heaven to the head apostle who’d be the main spokesman of the church so that everybody knows, and then we’re going to write it down in the Bible so the whole Christian world knows that you can now eat pork. A change has been made by God. All things have been made new. The Gospel of Mark says the same thing. Jesus cleansed all food. So there’s a radical change in a new dispensation in the era, and it was clearly made. That is a great point. When did God make that change so that everybody knew and it’s definitively clear? That never happened.
Derek: Exactly, and I even try to propose some solutions for the continuation aside in my article. Okay, maybe it happened Acts 2. That would seem to be the time that it would happen, because we’re talking about now that we are shifting from Old Covenant to New Covenant, Acts chapter 2, Pentecost, and you even look at the text that is used with reference to the pouring out of the spirits. It’s a Joel text, and Joel is clearly referring to prophecy within that Old Testament context so that the prophecy he’s referring to that all the sons and daughters are going to be doing would be authoritative revelation from God given that Old Testament context that Joel was speaking in.
Cliff: Exactly. It’s not a change. We’re going to continue Old Testament prophecy in terms of the nature of prophecy as God did in the Old Testament.
Derek: So we are continuationists. We believe that God continues the definition.
Cliff: There you go. God continued, at least through the apostles.
Derek: He continued the same definition from Old to New Testament with regard to prophecy.
Cliff: So if you’re out there and you’ve got some Charismatic friends, or I use Charismatic as the big umbrella that would include all those, whether it’s the Third Wave or the New Apostolic Movement or Pentecostals, just Charismatic, because as a former Charismatic, I went to Charismatic churches, the Vineyard and John Wimber’s church down in Anaheim. I attended there as well back in the 80s. You were just a Charismatic, whether you were Pentecostal [or something else]. It didn’t matter your background. So that’s just kind of how we related to one another. So that term works. But Derek, can you elaborate a little bit more on the re-definition of some of these other signed gifts that are playing into the conversation?
Derek: So this, as I was taking our, because you and I split up the class. It was fun. You got to teach the first part. I taught the second part. And my assignment was to take them through the, what are called the Third Wave or Charismatic Pentecostal views, the continuation of the gifts. And so we spent most of our time talking about prophecy and most of our time talking about tongues. And the more I was preparing and even the more as I was interacting, things were even, as I was interacting with students, things were coalescing in my own mind, crystallizing in my own mind. And it became very clear to me that we have a collection of pretty important words that are being redefined. And I’m so glad that you cited Grudem himself, that you quoted him. Because we’re not saying that they’ve redefined it. They are saying that they’ve redefined it. And so you have the re-definition. We mentioned this last podcast. You have the re-definition of prophecy. And the change there has been, we say that it’s authoritative revelation directly from God. It’s without error. And they would say that it’s something God spontaneously brought to mind. It doesn’t carry intrinsic divine authority, and it might be wrong. So there’s a clear change of definition. Then with the gift of tongues, we would argue that per Acts 2, where you have a clear definition of what tongues are, and that sets a precedent for how you should read the word tongues, the gift of tongues throughout the New Testament, that the gift of tongues was the ability to speak a foreign language that you did not previously know in order to communicate truth to someone that spoke that language. That’s the gift of tongues.
Cliff: Yeah. And when you say foreign language, you mean a human language. A human language, exactly. A recognizable human language.
Derek: And so the re-definition there is now, it’s a prayer language, and in often cases a private prayer language where God gives a heavenly language, an ability to speak to the speaker. They don’t even know what they’re saying or what’s coming out of their mouth, but it is from God and that it requires an interpreter and so on. But that is a new definition of what tongues means biblically from Acts 2 onwards.
Cliff: Let me highlight just real quick. The new definition on that tongue is two elements there. With the private prayer language, it’s a private practice that you do by yourself as opposed to the public practice of it in Acts 2. And then the nature of it, it’s really babbling. It’s not a human language. It’s not interpretable or translatable. Only God and the angels of heaven, you don’t even know what you’re saying. So the definition is kind of two-fold there that’s been changed. Go ahead to the next one.
Derek: And then the third one ties into that. This is where it became clear to me that we had multiple, more than a few definitions being redefined, is the word edification. So historically and biblically, edification means to build up. The church is to be built up, edified. I’m to edify you, you’re to edify me. And that means to build up, build up our spiritual eyes, build up our walk with the Lord, build us up in the faith, edify us in the faith. And that has meant biblically that you are built up in your understanding. You’re edified when you understand divine truth. And that was Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14, particularly 14, that in order for you to be built up, you need to be able to understand what is being spoken. Otherwise, you’re not being built up because edification comes through the understanding. Well, Sam Storms, in his book, The Language of Heaven, where he talks about tongues, he redefines edification. And he even clearly says that edification doesn’t have to come through the intellect all the time. And we need to be careful that we don’t idolize the intellect, and that you can be edified in other ways so that he can speak in tongues, he doesn’t know what he’s saying, but nevertheless, he feels near to God and the presence of God, and he is thereby edified. And there is, I think, is a clear redefinition of an important biblical and Christian term, edification, so that you can now do something like speak in tongues in this private prayer language, not understand what you’re saying, yet be edified. And then you can, because of that, you can now say that this is a practice that other Christians can do to be edified. And we’re sitting there going, well, edification can only happen through the understanding, so though they’re not being edified. And so it just, again, creates a lot of confusion and is unhelpful, generally speaking.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s a good point. Let me summarize that again. 1 Corinthians 14, Paul clearly says, edification comes with understanding. The intellect has to be involved. So in essence, what he’s saying is edification can come with a strictly subjective mystical experience that bypasses the intellect. And we’d say, no, that’s not biblical religion. That’s Eastern religion.
Derek: So again, important terms. And so it does go back to definitions. We need to clearly define, biblically, what these words mean. And you just need to be able to note that when there are people who are wanting to redefine important historic terms. Just take note of that and be willing to offer a clear biblical definition.
Cliff: Yeah, be a Berean, listen to what they say, and then say, where’s that in the Bible?
Derek: Right, exactly. And it is for your clarity, for your spiritual clarity, for your spiritual growth, for your edification, that you’re careful to understand these things. We want you to grow in your knowledge of the Lord and your walk with him. And so we encourage you to check out our other podcasts. We’ve done now 21 of them, and we encourage you to check out the other ones on withallwisdom.org. You can also check out all of our written resources to help you grow in your walk with the Lord Jesus. Until next time, keep seeking the Lord in his word, and we’ll see you again soon.
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