Before our series on James, we began to look at the “5 fold gifts”. We did an episode on apostleship and today we’re going to look at prophetic ministry. But first let’s look at Eph 4 and the context for these 5 gifts.

Eph 4:11-13
11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,
12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

Some things we talked about in the apostleship episode about this text were:
• These are functions and not offices. They are gifts not “roles”
• The scope of this text is about the equipping of the body. It is zoomed in on gifts that equip but not elevating them over others.
• Everyone has an aspect of all these gifts within them but most are strong in one of these areas.
• The goal is for the body of Christ to be whole and mature, to be united in faith, and full of the knowledge of God.

Prophet

To figure out what the gift of prophecy looks like today we need to look at what the prophets did in scripture.

Foretelling or Forthtelling?
Foretelling
• This is the common wester view of prophecy. It’s usually about predicting the future. It’s all about telling future events.
o Even when dealing with future events, often it was about what would happen if Israel didn’t turn back to God. Much of forthtelling was about conditional.
• When we examine the prophetic writings in scripture we see that the vast majority of all prophecy is directed at the present and not at the future… It’s not foretelling- it’s forthtelling
o Obviously there’s some foretelling in the prophets of the future- Of Jesus
o How much of prophetic ministry today is about the future if Jesus has come?

Forthtelling (Or exhortation)
• This is simply speaking forth God’s word and encouraging others to follow it.
• This is different from teaching/preaching as it is revelation from God into present situations. It is not exposition of the scripture but the exhortation should never contradict scripture.

In the OT the prophets were mainly covenant enforcers rather than ones who looked into a crystal ball and saw the future (divination?)
• The main point of OT prophecy was about calling God’s people back into covenant faithfulness and the same is true for those today who have the gift of prophecy.