Ephesians 3:4-5 “by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, (5) which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets.”
This brings us to the third class of prophet, which is the class of prophet that exists in the church today. The only difference between the foundational prophets and the prophets in the church today is in the area of revealing New Testament doctrine. As I have already mentioned, not all of the prophets that were in the early church were foundational prophets. There were also at that time, those who fall into the third class of prophet. The reason for that is because within each ministry gift category there are those who are more anointed than others. We saw earlier in this teaching, that the Lord Jesus listed the ministry gifts in order of their importance to the church. We have also seen that the ministry gift of the prophet received revelation knowledge of the doctrines of the New Testament. In other words, one of the reasons that the ministry gift of prophet was the second most important of the ministry gifts was because of the revelation knowledge they received. Because however, there is no new revelation of doctrine today, foundational prophets have since been done away with. Nevertheless the ministry gift of the prophet still exists in the church today, and this gift is still the second most important ministry gift in the church. One of the reasons for that is because this gift is still anointed by God to reveal and explain the doctrines that are recorded in the New Testament. In other words, the prophet of today does not receive revelation of new doctrine, but rather they receive revelation knowledge of doctrine which is already recorded in the New Testament scriptures. The apostle Paul confirms that truth to us in the above quoted passage of scripture.
2 Timothy 4:1-2 “I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: (2) preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.”
In the above quoted passage of scripture the apostle Paul charged Timothy, as a young minister, to preach the word. That admonition continues to be applicable to every minister of the gospel today, for the main function of all ministry gifts (including prophets) is to preach and teach the word of God. Nevertheless, as with the apostle, the prophet operates in a different anointing to the other ministry gifts with regards to their teaching of the gospel. When the prophet teaches the word of God, there is also very often a degree of revelation knowledge imparted through their preaching and teaching, for their understanding of God’s word is always deeper than the other ministry gifts (excluding the apostle). And so they will share nuggets of truth in God’s word that you would not have seen before.
Luke 5:39 “And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, 'The old is better.'”
As revealed to us earlier by the apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit reveals the mysteries of Christ to the prophet, and the prophet in turn, reveals those mysteries to the body of Christ through their preaching and teaching of God’s word. The revelation knowledge that they receive however, will always be completely in line with the written New Testament, for there is no new doctrine in the church today. However, just as in the case of the apostle, the Lord uses the ministry of the prophet today to restore certain biblical truths to the church, because many of those truths that were clearly understood by the early church have become lost to the church over time. And so although it may seem like prophets are teaching new doctrine that is not the case at all, because their teaching just highlights the errors of many false doctrines that have found their way into the church over the centuries. It is for this reason that the ministry gift of prophet is very often opposed in the church, because of the anointing that they have to reveal the light of the gospel. The world calls it “resistance to change”, and in the above quoted passage of scripture our Lord Jesus mentioned this same phenomenon. In other words, even though these ministry gifts reveal the errors in some of the doctrines that have become entrenched in the church, many in the church still refuse to change their way of thinking.
Acts 11:27 “And in these days prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch.”
Unlike apostles, the ministry gift of the prophet is not called to establish churches. Similarly to the office of the apostle however, they are called to travel to different churches in order to minister the gospel. The passage of scripture quoted above refers to Agabus and some other prophets who went down from the church in Jerusalem to minister to the church in Antioch, and there is another account in scripture of the two prophets, Judas and Silas, going from the church in Jerusalem to minister to the church in Antioch (Acts 15:32). In both these instances these various prophets came from the church where they were based. Their base church in these examples just happened to be the church that was in Jerusalem. Other prophets were also based in other churches however, such as those who were based in the church at Antioch (Acts 13:1). And so we can see from these scriptures that prophets tended to travel to churches in teams in order to minister. Not always did only prophets travel together however, because we know that Paul and Silas travelled together to minister in the churches, and Silas was a prophet while Paul was an apostle. The point that needs to be made here however is that although prophets are based in local churches, their ministry gift dictates that they are to move around to other churches to minister the word of God. The reason for that is because there are far fewer prophets in the church than there are pastors or teachers, and so most churches do not have prophets based in their churches. This is why churches should be open to allowing these ministry gifts to visit and minister to them. Congregations that refuse to allow prophets to minister in their churches for various reasons, such as not understanding the ministry of the prophet, will never grow to maturity in Christ.
Michael E.B. Maher
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