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October 25, 2022 |
| The End Of Prophets? | ||
There is a teaching coming out of some of the ministerial schools that is not Biblically sound. It focuses on this verse.
The Law and The Prophets were until Yohannan; from then, the Kingdom of God is announced, and everyone is pushing to enter it. (Luke 16:16)
Jesus' words here are repeated again in Matthew in a slightly different form.
All The Prophets and the Law (Torah) have prophesied until Yohannan. (Matthew 11:13)
The teaching is that Jesus is saying there will be no more prophets after John (the Baptist). The teaching continues from there to say that the definition of prophet has now changed and pastors / preachers are now prophets. I know of no accepted name for this view so I will refer to it as ExProphetism.
In this study we will see:
The phrase "The Law and the Prophets" had a very specific meaning to Jews of Jesus' time and that continues through to Jews of our time. The books of the Old Testament (as we call it) were broken into three sections:
The books in the section called the Writings were generally considered to have been of less value and were referred to less often. That doesn't mean there aren't any in the New Testament. As you might expect, Hebrews, the most Jewish book in the New Testament, has one.
And I said, "Behold, I come", because in the beginning of The Writings it is written of me, "to do your will, oh God." (Hebrews 10:7)
The first book in the Writings is Psalms, which is where this quote comes from.
The New Testament has many references to the phrases, "The Law and the Prophets" or just "the prophets". This is the list, from Matthew through Acts, of those verses that use the phrases as a reference to those sections. I've excluded references to "the Prophets" when they could be understood as references to the plurality of the books of the prophets. These references do not stop with Acts, but going that far makes the point without killing an excessive number of trees.
And they said, "In Bethlehem of Judaea", for thus it is written in The Prophets: (Matthew 2:5)
Do not think that I have come to revoke the Law (Torah) or The Prophets; I am not come to revoke but to fulfill. (Matthew 5:17)
Everything whatsoever you desire that people should do for you, do likewise for them, for this is the Law and The Prophets. (Matthew 7:12)
On these two commands depend all the Law (Torah) and The Prophets." (Matthew 22:40)
Abraham said to him, "They have Moses and The Prophets, let them hear them." (Luke 16:29)
And Yeshua led his twelve and he said to them, "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem and all that is written in The Prophets about the son of Man shall be fulfilled." (Luke 18:31)
And he said to them, "These are the words that I spoke with you when I was with you, that everything that is written about me in the Law (Torah) of Moses and in The Prophets and in The Psalms must be fulfilled." (Luke 24:44)
Phillipus found Nathaniel and said to him: "We have found him of whom Moses wrote in the Law (Torah) and in The Prophets; he is Yeshua Bar Yoseph from Nazareth." (John 1:45)
For it is written in The Prophets, "All of them will be taught of God." Everyone, therefore, who has heard from the Father and has learned from him, comes to me. (John 6:45)
And when The Law and The Prophets were read, the Elders of the synagogue sent to them and said, "Men, brothers, if you have a word of comfort, speak with the people." (Acts 13:15)
Beware therefore, lest that which is written in The Prophets come upon you: (Acts 13:40)
And yet I confess this, that in the same doctrine of which they speak, I serve The God of my fathers, as I believe all things which are written in the Law (Torah) and in The Prophets." (Acts 26:14)
And they appointed a day for him, and they gathered and many came to him where he was dwelling. And he revealed to them concerning The Kingdom of God as he testified and persuaded them concerning Yeshua from The Law of Moses and from The Prophets, from morning until evening. (Acts 28:23)
From these we can see that the phrase would have been understood by Jesus' audience to be a reference to all the words of the covenant. So now we return to the verse in question.
The Law and The Prophets were until Yohannan; from then, the Kingdom of God is announced, and everyone is pushing to enter it. (Luke 16:16)
Jesus' audience would have understood him to be saying that the Old Covenant began to come to an end with John the Baptist, who had been announcing the coming of the Kingdom of God. They would not have understood Jesus to be saying there would be no more prophets. They failed to understand many things Jesus said but that would not have been the case here. The phrase "The Law and The Prophets" cannot be divided into two phrases. As we've seen in the verses above, it commonly appears as a phrase and has a specific meaning.
There is also no reason for us to understand Jesus as saying that there will be no more prophets. That simply isn't the point he is making - not even close.
Also, focusing on Jesus' words "the prophets" in the key verse distracts us from seeing that he also said "the law". If he meant there would be no more prophets, what would he have been saying about the law? He certainly wouldn't have been contradicting what he said in Matthew 5:17 above.
In the Old Testament, a prophet was a man who was given the Holy Spirit by God in order to deliver messages to his people. These messages were not Bible-based but new information that sometimes became canonical.
Prophets were a necessity in the Old Covenant because the Holy Spirit was only given rarely. If God needed to deliver a message to the entirety of his people, this was the mechanism he usually used (Sometimes angels were used). Sometimes God had a message for an individual or subset of his people and a prophet was commonly used for that, as well.
There were many more prophets than we hear about. Elijah and Elisha give us glimpses into prophetic schools. In Kings we see stories of unknown or relatively unknown prophets appearing in the text to do as God had said. These prophets would be dispatched by God to take a message to someone.
The stories of the Old Testament prophets also sometimes include them performing miracles. This fits well with what Paul says about the gifts of the spirit - that a prophet is above the miracle worker.
There is no justification for changing the definition of "Prophet" for the New Testament. Paul speaks of the roles of prophets, preachers, and teachers and he gives no reason to think they overlap. The Old Testament has these same roles and no rabbi would have had the chutzpah to claim to be a prophet.
Prophets are very rarely needed in the New Testament because each of us has the Holy Spirit and God can speak directly to us without an intermediary.
ExProphetism conflicts with the Bible in many ways and places. Unfortunately, these have been patched over by twisting scripture into unnatural readings.
Agabus appears a couple times in Acts as an Old Testament style prophet. He warns of future events and uses physical items to symbolically convey his message. His existence contradicts ExProphetism and would destroy it. Therefore he has been twisted in various ways, sometimes into a worker of evil.
The apostles (a role above prophets) take him to be a prophet from God speaking by the Holy Spirit - which is how the text describes him.
And in those days prophets came there from Jerusalem. 28 And one of them stood up whose name was Agabus and instructed them by the Spirit that a great famine would occur in the whole land and that this famine would be in the days of Claudius Caesar. 29 But the disciples set aside, according to what each one of them had, to send for the service of the brethren who dwelt in Judea; 30 They sent by the hand of BarNaba and Shaul to the Elders who were there. (Acts 11:27-30)
The apostles plainly accept him as a prophet and begin preparing for this famine.
Agabus appears a second time in Acts as he travels to the location where Paul and his time have come on their way back to Jerusalem. He is bringing a warning.
And when we were there many days, a certain Prophet had come down from Judea, whose name was Agabus. 11 And he came to us and took off the leather belt on the waist of Paulus and he tied his own feet and his hands and he said, "Thus says the Spirit of Holiness: 'The Jews in Jerusalem will bind and deliver the man who owns this leather belt into the hands of the Gentiles.'" 12 And when we heard these words we begged of him, we and the people of that place, that he would not go to Jerusalem.
Some people misunderstand what is happening here. Agabus is there so:
Agabus is not there to tell Paul he has slipped off the path God has set for him. Look at the words the Spirit says through Agabus.
There is a single reference in the Bible to the daughters of Philip as prophetesses. There are more references to them in the writings of the early church fathers. All of the refer to them as prophetesses - not as preachers or evangelists, like their father.
And the next day we departed and came to Caesarea, and we entered and lodged in the house of Philippus the evangelist, he who was of the seven. 9 And he had four virgin daughters who did prophesy.
The text and the church fathers could have used words like minister, preach, or teach to refer to their actions, but it chooses to use prophesy. Some translations say, "they had the gift of prophesy". They are not talking about people who only read from the Bible.
Perhaps the best example comes from the entire book of Revelation. John is acting as an Old Testament prophet, very much in the pattern of Daniel. An angel brings him the message. The message has similar symbology and even continues the symbology of Daniel's heads and horns.
The text of Revelation also refers to John as a seer (prophet).
And he said to me: "Seer, no! I am your fellow servant and of your brothers the prophets and of those who observe these words of this book. Worship God! (Revelation 22:9)
Revelation also prophesies about the Two Witnesses who are to come in our future and calls them prophets.
And I shall grant my two witnesses to prophesy 1260 days while wearing sackcloth. (Revelation 11:3)
Revelation makes it clear that these two prophets are not Jews but are, in some sense, Christian.
And their corpses came into the street of the Great City, which spiritually is called Sadom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. (Revelation 11:8)
We've seen that Jesus is not saying that there will be no more prophets. That idea is further contradicted by the prophets we've seen in the New Testament - real, Old Testament style, prophets. These were people that New Testament calls prophets, when other words could have been used to describe them. We also saw that the apostles accepted that there were prophets and valued their words as the words of the Holy Spirit.
Because Jesus did not say there would be no more prophets and because there were prophets, there is absolutely no reason to redefine a prophet.
Preaching, teaching, and reading from the Bible are not prophesying. They are not like what the role the Old Testament shows us a prophet held, a role that we see continuing in the New Testament.
If reading from the Bible is prophesying then everyone is a prophet, and when everyone is a prophet, then no one is a prophet and there is no reason to use the appellation on anyone. Yet, the New Testament names certain people as prophets.
A preacher or teacher today does not qualify as a prophet since he proclaims or explains God's Word, previously given and written - Charles C. Ryrie / Basic Theology