Prophecy has been a bone of contention since the 20th Century church (or at least parts of it) "rediscovered" the charismata after centuries of de facto cessationist rule. While many churches still resist this move of the Spirit, some have opened themselves to it, to various degrees.
For example, at the local church I attend, prophecy is encouraged, but within limits. Those who believe God has delivered through them a message for the church can check in with one of the pastors and, should the message pass muster, deliver it on Sunday morning, or at least have it paraphrased by the pastor. In such cases, the pastor who announces the upcoming prophecy usually provides some guidance to the gathered folk about the local policy concerning prophecy, particularly in regard to appropriate content.
There is nothing unreasonable about limits per se. To impose prudent limits to prophetic activity is indisputably biblical. The question is, are our sanctions in line with those we've been given?
Frankly, having prophets submit their prophecies to the pastor for approval probably wasn't what Paul had in mind. Hearing God speak through the spiritual gift of prophecy was intended to be a regular part of our corporate worship. In the "gifts" passages in 1 Cor. 12-14, Paul assumed that it would be. God would speak through the church to the church. And he affirmed this method of prophetic expression in a letter to a disorderly church, where prophecy and other gifts had been abused in the context of corporate gatherings. Paul is very clear about proper procedure in the Corinthians' public gatherings: "Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said." (I Cor 14:29) From the letter's context — throughout, Paul is addressing matters of corporate worship — prophets are plainly directly to speak to the church at large. Paul calls for order, but nowhere speaks about pre-approval.
So where are the limits? Again, Paul's word on the subject is simple and clear: In the weighing carefully. Anyone can speak, but the act of speaking makes no one's words into God's words. They are God's words only when they are tested and found to be true by the church (the others, in this context, cannot mean merely the other prophets).
Paul here affirms an operative principle that we can see at work in Jewish history: The prophets' words enshrined in the Old Testament came to be there after the nation of Israel sifted them (and was sifted by them) and time proved them worthy of preservation. Many prophets arose in Israel, but only a few spoke God's incontrovertible Word to the ages. A local church and the church at large finds its true prophets by allowing aspiring prophets to speak. Those who over time speak truth earn the ears — and the trust — of the church and, as a result, lay a claim to legitimate authority.
It's important to note that Paul also makes no statement about what is or is not proper subject matter for prophecy. Many churches have responded to this astonishing omission by instituting local rules. One can empathize with this tendency. We don't want people to be offensive or make accusations in public (at least, not until after having exercised the prescriptions outlined by Jesus for confronting sin recorded in Matt. 18). Besides, there are children in the room. The potential for hurt and misunderstaiding is very real. Our tendency to impose limits (Paul, after all, did not say we shouldn't limit content) is entirely understandable. But again, the question is, are such limits biblical?
One common guideline springs, I think, from a particularly unbiblical assumption: The prescription that all prophecy must be "encouraging." Unfortunately, that word has acquired a modern meaning roughly equivalent to positive. In practice, this often boils down to the baseless idea that prophecy must, in all cases, be nice or make people "feel better." This is not only a narrow definition of the word encouraging, but it also reflects a misconception — and this is the heart of the matter — of the essentially contrarian nature of the prophetic office.
(By the way, I do not mean Office. I do not believe that prophet should be an officially recognized position in the church. Nor should anyone wear the word Prophet before their name, as in Prophet Jane Doe. Paul says everyone should aspire to prophecy! That passage in the book of Joel (2:28-32) is pretty clear that God intended to "pour out His Spirit," on "all people," men, woman, old, young. Prophecy, in the age of the church, was not intended to be the special preserve of a chosen few. It's lay ministry.)
Here, a look at the wide sweep of prophetic history is helpful if not particularly satisfying. The prophets whose words are preserved as Scripture were (let's be honest, shall we?) an unseemly lot: And just in case you're still laboring under the illusion that only Old Testament prophets were a bit off, let's keep in mind that John, the forerunner of Christ, lived in the desert, ate bugs, and went about warning people to repent, and both he and Jesus variously referred to the respected religious leaders of their day as hypocrites, snakes and whitewashed tombs. Paul continued this practice in his letter to the Galatians, chiding that church in no uncertain terms for departing from the gospel and calling for the offending Judaizers to ... well, read it yourself. It's not pretty. And John the brother of Andrew, in the Bible's final letter, the Revelation, takes several churches to task for their shortcomings in surprisingly strong terms. There was nothing nice about any of this. With that as backdrop, it is difficult to appeal to Scripture in support of what are, at best, extra-biblical limits.
It is a sad fact that, within most church organizations, correction is no longer considered a legitimate prophetic function. (Unless, of course, you're the paid professional — one reason why my statement above about "office" should be heeded by the church). We need to reconsider what it actually means to encourage. Webster's says:
To inspire with courage, spirit or hope; to spur on.It means to call up courage in someone. There is nothing to indicate that this is inconsistent with correction. Consider the following example, a wife pleading with her Marlboro Man: "George, you've got to stop smoking. I've heard you coughing in the morning. And you can hardly climb stairs without wheezing. You promised the doctor that you'd 'cut down' but I know you've been sneaking cigarettes on the 'walks' you take. Honey, I want the best for your health. Please, let's kick the habit. We can do it together." Have a problem with that? I don't. I'd hope to hear that from someone if I was addicted to nicotine. I'd want to be busted for sneaking ciggies on the sly and be encouraged to clean up my act with the help of someone who loved me enough to confront me. And I'm sure about this because that was the contrarian/prophetic message my Dad's wife delivered to him at age 55, after his doctor announced that Dad had emphysema and if he didn't quit the habit, he'd be dead in five years. What did Dad do? He not only kicked the cigarettes, but caffeinated coffee, too. (That cup of coffee and first cigarette in the morning were two of my father's favorite things ... he told me years later he still missed them.) Not only that, he kicked the excess weight, and exercised his way to better health at 60 than he'd had at 45. He lived long enough to celebrate with my Mom their 50th wedding anniversary and died in his 80s with her by his side to the last. Her prophecy was entirely consistent with Dad's best interest, but its delivery wasn't a happy moment for him (I know, I was there) and it issued from a warning of dire consequences.
Why should it be any different when one of the prophets who make up Christ's Bride pleads similarly with the those who stand in for the Bridegroom?
It shouldn't be different, but it often is, and while this disappointing, it's not surprising. Institutions are rarely open to correction. Religious institutions are no exception (also disappointing). Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches alike have historically silenced or otherwise sidelined those whose voices bring the discomfort that inevitably comes when the institution's or its leaders' shadow side is exposed to view.
Nor is this anything new: Before there was a Christian community or its Christ, God's Chosen People regularly killed their prophets and awaited the Messiah only to reject all who came in his name. (Jesus was not, by any means, the only one to make the claim and be killed for it.)
Killing those who question the received wisdom (as interpreted by the prevailing religious leadership) is a long, sad tradition in Christian polity. Read Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and you'll find that a substantial number of those who lost their lives for Christ did so at the hands of others who claimed the name of Christ. If you read closely enough, you'll find that most of that subset were contrarians who died for having the audacity to call the church to change that most Christians now take quite for granted: Advocating that the scriptures be translated into the vox populi, for example. Or how about printing the scriptures in book form so that someone not officially connected with the clergy or a monastery could actually read and study them? Yes, people died so you can have that leather-bound, gold-leaf edged, red-letter-edition family Bible on your coffee table.
Thank God, killing those who think outside the box is no longer an official option in most Christian churches. Sometime in the 1600s, people finally wearied of burning and drowning their neighbors and decimating the populations of neighboring realms over whether the communion wafer was or was not the actual physical body of our Lord. A wiser more aware populace began to see that leaders were not infallible and that the fact that God permitted evil leaders did not equate to a divine right to rule.
But we are far from rolling out the welcome mat to those bear gifts of correction. Today, we excommunicate them, stigmatize them, marginalize them — or boo them and heckle them at commencement addresses, as was done to President Obama recently at Notre Dame. (Yes, he's a Christian and, yes, if you are a Christian, he's your brother in Christ, whether you like it or not. And, yes, I'm saying that what he's said recently about the so-called culture wars might be prophetic. Are we willing to listen and discern before we pass judgment?)
Some marginalized prophets eventually go elsewhere and start yet another "protest" church, which accounts for much of church history (even monasteries were a less obvious form of schism). This phenomenon is largely responsible for the current mutilated state of the Body of Christ.
Some don't start new churches but, as is the fashion now, they write books, go on speaking tours and advocate leaving church altogether.
And I want to make very clear, I do not mean to imply that the issues that currently divide us are not serious. On the contrary, discerning what God is saying to his church about such things is of the utmost importance. But we cannot hear Him if we suppress the mechanism that God ordained for the airing of difficult issues and prayerfully, humbly getting at what God might want us to do about them. In it's absence, we inevitably settle for a veneer of "nice" beneath which germinate seeds of discord that, absent the purifying light of the Spirit, sprout in dark corners, like poisonous mushrooms, and emerge into view as full-blown conflicts. The result are bitter, prolonged and often terribly public battles that should have been family discussions.
Prophecy, properly understood, is a God-given means by which God's Family, when it gathers around the Lord's Table, is encouraged, both negatively, by warnings and the potential for negative consequences, and positively by the expectation of pleasing God and seeing His Kingdom advanced. The Scriptures are clear. Prophetic messages are not to be accepted uncritically. But they are equally clear that it takes a whole church to discern what God is saying to His Church. Rather than making extra-biblical rules, leaders ought to be practicing and teaching discernment (not to mention making use of those in the Body who have spiritual gifts of discernment of spirits).
Yes, that's the more difficult path. And it's messy — no argument there. But the church has been a mess since day one (imagine Acts 2 at your church this Sunday: Tongues of fire? OMG! Are they drunk??). At some point, we have to learn to love the mess, don't we? When you have small children, your house is never clean. You don't, for that reason, lock the kids in a closet, even when people come to visit. (Not if you're a healthy parent). Kids are kids. You have to let them be kids before they can grow up. Why would it be any different with prophets (or pastors, or missionaries, or church secretaries, for that matter)?
We all learn by experience. How can the members of the Body learn to discern God's voice unless we're all in a position to hear it? And we need to hear it unchecked and unmediated by man, no matter what that man's title.
If some of God's most articulate voices go unheard because what they say might make us uncomfortable, then we will be left to wonder, when disaster strikes, how did things go so wrong when we were feeling so comfortable?
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