God gave special guidance through prophets in both the Old and New Testaments. So when men and women claim to issue prophetic pronouncements today, what are we to make of that?
One novel suggestion involves a redefinition of the word prophet. This view maintains that in the New Testament, only an apostle received the same level of supernatural revelation as an Old Testament prophet. God’s communication to and through other prophets was (and is) less precise and hence fallible. So a modern-day “prophet” cannot declare, “Thus saith the Lord.” Instead, he or she should say, “I sense that God may be revealing something to me. Listen and see if you perceive that this is God’s revelation to you.” (Interestingly, Agabus is cited as an example of a “fallible” prophet whose predictions fell short of being perfectly accurate.) But the argument for this position is unconvincing. One purpose of predictive prophecy is to inform people about something that is going to happen before it happens. But it is hard to see how this is accomplished by a fallible prophecy. How could you know ahead of time if such a message “sensed” by a prophet is from God? You can’t. If it comes tr
