TESTING THE PROPHETIC SERIES
The Inconsistency of Prophesy
In the first 500 years of church history, aberrant uses of the gifts of the Spirit did not serve as a reason to reject the ministry of the Holy Spirit. What we have seen happening in the history of Christianity, we have seen happening today. Just as in years past, the true mark of Christianity was not the rejection of the ministry of the Spirit wholesale, but the rejection of the aberrant practices. Let no man call what God intended for good an evil thing. Rather, the problem lies within the heart of people, not the gift itself. As we have said earlier in this series, the gift is the Spirit, it is not the ability to work great things. Let us never reject the Holy Spirit and His working the people of God.
We still see many of the same inconsistencies in our era. Strange, aberrant, and heretical uses of the gifts of the Spirit are common today. A few examples should suffice to show my point:
A woman stands up publicly in a church service claiming that God has told her that someone in the service had a headache and that it was going to be healed. As she waited for someone to volunteer for prayer, she turns her hand on herself and exclaims, “Its me! I have the headache!”
A visiting man claiming the gift of prophecy in a home group prophesied over the leader of that group and said that he was called as an apostle. He went on to say that the apostles of the church are like Joseph, who was betrayed by his brothers and thrown in the pit and sold into slavery. He claimed the pastors of the church are the brothers of Joseph and that pastors would reject and spit upon the leader of this home group. It’s far more likely that this visiting man had been hurt by pastoral figures in his past. In his wounding, he was quick to wound others.
A group of people hungering for more of God begin printing and studying the prophecies of a prophetess in their fellowship. Soon they exchange their love of the scripture for the love of these prophetic words. Eventually families are destroyed as the prophetess and leaders of the group abscond with much of the money that had been entrusted to them.
A pastor claims to stand in the office of a prophet and threatens to fire his staff if they do not get on board with the direction he intends to lead the church.
These are all true examples. From simple immaturity to spiritual abuse, the spiritual gifts have seen it all, and that is all throughout church history. Well-known public figures have had their ministries riddled with scandals; whether financial, or sexual and spiritual abuse. Men and women have suffered under a lack of accountability in prophetic ministry.
Today, we have a credibility problem.
The year of 2020 exposed the wishful thinking of many prophetic voices. Prophetic words at the beginning of the year claiming that 2020 was going to be the year of breakthrough. Many voices said COVID-19 would disappear by April or Easter of 2020 (it did not). The US presidential election was prophesied erroneously by many mainline prophetic voices. What are we to do with the mess we have made?
From the early days of the church, the problem of what to do with gifted people was a serious question. The early church developed guideposts to discern prophetic voices. The kinds of issues we deal with today are similar to the problems they dealt with then. There were very few “how to prophecy” teachings in the first 500 years of the church. The closest example would be Gregory the Great’s Homilies on the Book of Ezekiel. But even then, Gregory does not deal so much with questions like “what does God’s voice sound like?” or “how do I give a prophetic word?” as he deals with the nature of prophets and prophecy itself.
Given the impact of the Montanist movement, and the stories of men and women like Valens, it makes sense that in the earliest church documents you can find codified principles for dealing with prophets and prophetic voices.
Do the standards they held up in yesteryear have any bearing on us today?
Is there any wisdom in what was done in the first few hundred years of church history that we could apply today?
What kind of principles might we find to employ as guiderails to the exercise of the spiritual gifts today?