Speaking in the Spirit

A Study of New Testament Prophecy

Stephen Wexler

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781532656200
  9781532656217
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532656224
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

What is the gift of prophecy? Does it continue today, or did it pass away with the apostles? What does it mean to speak in the Spirit? Few subjects are more contentious and more misunderstood in the church today. This book examines these questions by carefully studying Scripture and the works of the most prominent scholars. The conclusions have profound implications for Christian belief and behavior.

Part One

GROUNDWORK

Chapter 1

An Introduction to Old Testament Prophecy

It is impossible to investigate the New Testament gift of prophecy properly without considering its Old Testament counterpart. We therefore need to undertake a brief survey of the phenomenon of prophecy in the Old Testament and consider how it might bear on the nature of the New Testament gift.

What “Prophecy” Means

The Greek word for prophet (prophētēs) is composed of the prefix pro- and the verb phēmi (“speak”). Some key meanings that the prefix pro- brings to composites are:

1. Standing in another’s place (as in “pronoun” in English)

2. Forth and publicly (as in “proclaim”)

3. Beforehand (pro- becomes pre- in Latin, as in “predict”)15

Although etymology is valuable, we should never feel constrained by it: D. A. Carson, following James Barr, rightly warns against an overreliance on etymology in understanding words, which he calls “the root fallacy,”16 and talks about “semantic obsolescence”17: it is clear that words only mean what they mean when they are used, not what they may once have meant, or may mean elsewhere. Nevertheless, etymology is useful as an indicator of possible meaning. Prophecy is commonly described as both “foretelling” and “forth-telling” (that is, as prediction and proclamation), but these cover only two of the three etymological possibilities above, and omit, as we shall now see, arguably the most significant.

An Initial Definition

In the Old Testament, prophecy seems to be God speaking through people, that is, people speaking in God’s name, on his behalf and with his authority to declare his plans and purposes. Prophecy announces unequivocally the very words of God. No Old Testament prophet ever says, “God may be saying this.” This is why prophecy often appears in the first person: it is often unequivocal direct speech, rather than a potentially unreliable report.

Because the prophecy recorded in Old Testament Scripture comes as the very words of God, it has an absolute authority, and cannot be challenged. Grudem rightly says, “We do not find in the Old Testament any instance where the prophecy of . . . a true prophet is ‘evaluated’ or ‘sifted’ so that the good might be sorted from the bad, the true from the false.”18 People never ask, “Which parts are true, and which parts are false?” This is certainly correct: Jeremiah’s prophecy, recorded in Scripture, is wholly true, despite the fact that many failed to acknowledge it as such in his own day. As the widow of Zarephath proclaims to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth” (1 Kgs 17:24).

The First Prophets

Michael Heiser says, “If we define prophets simply as spokespeople for God, prophets go all the way back to the beginning.”19 Adam clearly encountered God and heard his voice (e.g., Gen 3:17–19); he must also have reported this to others, and so could by that token be considered the first prophet.20

Jesus refers to Abel as a prophet (Luke 11:50–51). Enoch is described as prophesying by the New Testament (Jude 14–16), and his prophecy consists of proclaiming God’s judgment on the ungodly. It is also possible to describe Noah as a prophet: Peter calls him a “herald of righteousness” (2 Pet 2:5), and his warnings about the impending flood might well be called prophetic; the building of the ark could also be viewed as a prophetic act.

However, it is Abraham who is the first person to be explicitly identified as a prophet by the Old Testament itself: we are told that because he is a prophet, his prayer will be heard (Gen 20:7). Indeed, God may be referring to all the patriarchs as prophets when he says, “Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm” (Ps 105:15)!

Although these figures may all be designated as prophets, it is with Moses that we get the clearest articulation of the term, and its prime example. First, God says to Moses, “your brother Aaron shall be your prophet [Heb. nabi’]” (Exod 7:1), where the meaning is clearly “spokesman,” “mouthpiece,” or “representative”: Aaron will speak on behalf of Moses. This verse reveals the core notion of one person faithfully conveying the words of another; and so a prophet of God is someone who acts as a faithful spokesman for God, someone through whom God speaks.

Although Aaron was Moses’ spokesman, Moses was God’s spokesman, that is, God would speak through him (Exod 4:15). Nevertheless, the term “prophet” seems to be used of Moses only retrospectively, to highlight his superiority over other prophets: “no prophet has risen since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (Deut 34:10, cf. Deut 18:18). Moses was not just a prophet, he was the Old Testament prophet.

The prophetic role of Moses involved speech (“I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak”—Exod 4:12), and it also included authenticating action: “I will be with your mouth . . . and will teach you . . . what to do” (Exod 4:15). Thus Moses was given miraculous signs to authenticate his words, and armed with these gifts of both speech and action, he played his part in the rescue of Israel. Subsequent prophets were men and women of authoritative speech, sometimes also authenticated by m...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One: Groundwork
• Part Two: Prophets At Corinth
• Part Three: Agabus
• Part Four: Synthesis
• Appendix 1: The Interpretation of Tongues
• Appendix II: The Danger of Narrow Appeals to History
• Bibliography