I think we misunderstand and misrepresent what a prophet is. 

Scripture says:  Keep the Sabbath holy.
A prophet would say:  Thus saith the Lord, if you keep breaking the Sabbath I'm going to withhold rain from you.

Jesus said:  You will be persecuted.
A prophet told Paul:  Your hands will be bound like this....

At other times, a prophet with forth-tell as well, or take the Word and apply it to our life which is exactly what we should do today.

We all prophecy in part.  There are times when God speaks to you, and applies the Word to your life, and times when the Holy Spirit warns you about something ahead, or gives a reassurance or promise about something.

Can there be a prophet who speaks the future as Isaiah did?  Well, that's simply not my job to decide who and when and why, it's God's. (I Corinthians 12:4ish)  But I would suggest a real prophet would apply the Scripture to today, occasionally have a promise or a warning about things to come, and most definitely would have to be a man or woman of great prayer and study.


When Paul said that, the Scriptures weren't put together yet as we now have them.  We should take his statement, and any Scripture written afterwards should be considered unnecessary?  Dispose of John & Revelation and others? (Revelation might disappear to some applause)

A prophet would reveal today what prophets revealed in Paul's day.  Application, promises and warnings all consistent with and based from Scripture.

The biggest reason prophets are less needed today is that we ALL have the gift of the Holy Spirit and we can ALL hear the direction and guidance of God, and ALL can have the Scriptures revealed to us and God's will revealed to us. 

The only reason God uses them today is perhaps because so few of us pray enough or he wouldn't have to go through someone else.

I'm as skeptical as you with most so-called prophets.  The term brings up bad connotations these days.  Nevertheless, God still speaks through people today, and God speaking through someone is prophecy.

Name it and claim it but don't expect Bible students and the history of such people who MADE the claim and ugly things happened to them. Remember Montanus who first hired a "treasurer" and seduced two women to 'prophesy' through him.  Well, both prophetesses caught on and killed themselves at the same time in different cities.

You are claiming what is NOT claimed and proven and you cannot prove any prophecy or revelation today.

Just don't expect us to drink no KoolAid you cook up.

No manna, you are trying to collect it on the Sabbath which means REST and NOT Worship.
Why is it that I know that from the Bible and you probably PAID someone to be your mediator in song and sermon
and got your anxieties all ruffled so you just feel rotten in the morning and your kid's health care money has been fleeced right out of your holy raised hands.

Why didn't YOU figure that out? Or is the INSTITUTE now taking the money due only to the DESTITUTE because someone CLAIMED that God told them to fleee the widows and orphans?

I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'm going to assume you're reacting against what you perceive to be the "Name it and Claim it" philosophy.  I myself have only heard of this line of belief, and know nothing of it, so I cannot comment.

But allow me to ask you (and anyone else who wishes to answer) a genuine question or two:

Do we really serve a god who would speak to a few elite followerss and then lie silent and dormant for 2000+ plus years, perhaps silent until Christ will come again?  If we serve that kind of god..... why do we serve him?  What's the point?  If all we have to go on is the words of the Bible and nothing more, what makes our God any different from any other silent, dead, pre-frab god which man has fancied throughout the millenia?

Or do we believe our Bibles and understand that we serve a Living God, one of the Living Word, a breathing, passionate, purposeful God, a God who moves and stirs us uniquely to action?  Do we serve a God whose Spirit is not only alive within us but WORKING within us, impacting the world in a way that only a vibrant and alive Being can?

I can't speak for you, but I serve that Living God, that God who not only died for me but actively rose from the dead, as a tangible, literal sign that He is not dead, but ALIVE, that God who promised to send Another (the Spirit) soon after He ascended to take the place beside the Abba.

I can get excited about that God!  I can adore that God!  I can ache to joyfully serve that God!

So back to the original topic question, how does God speak?  Is it only through the dry and dusty words on a page.... or is there something else at work, SomeONE whose thoughts and ways are higher than our own?  If so.... does He really speak only through words written 2000+ years ago?  Or does He live within us, currently, urgently showing Himself alive through us in the here and the now?

I wouldn't either (not necessarily), but some interpret the Bible in such a way as to render it dry and dusty.


I love that too.  I have that framed and sitting beside my computer -- and I pray it often.

You have to live longer than most preachers of a "direct voice from God" which misused Calvin calls "fanatics" to understand that SPIRIT means MIND.  You can get sermonized and versified and classified for 90 years and still not have a remote clue about the story line and the purpose of the Bible.

One Hebrew word has--it has been claimed--been translated by 61 different english words. The KJV says that they picked one word over the other at times for "pleasing variety" probably to keep it from being dry. I have read that the story of Genesis uses only about 70 root words and none of these have "definitions." Rather, we are faced with reading contemporaneous literture to see how a specific word is actually used down through the ages. If I am not wacko (my dog loves me), I can look at a passage and immediately see that it is a motiff or 'pattern' used many times: Jesus said that truth had been hidden in parables from the foundaton of the world and he spoke to the MASSES using parables.  The creation story is repeated at the flood, at the Red Sea and Israel was in the same void and empty state: ignorant and self-wasted. The same flood and Red Sea pattern was a type of baptism showing how God saves us OUT of the ignorance of the masses.

My great dilema is that I can take a chapter just about anywhere and spread it out on my computer. Then look up the Hebrew, Greek and Latin words. And, behold, the message is repeated in all of the "legends" which they called history and were not just myths. That is why the books of Moses debunks the Babylonian Legends which the same Hebrews had come out of and were condemned to return.  I have collected many of the translations 3,000 years older than Moses. You begin to see that God had Moses write a COUNTER CULTURAL prescriptive to prevent the Hebrews from falling back under superstition: it didn't work then and doesn't work now.

Frustration comes when one passage from Paul where he POINTS to Greek concepts, gods or worship, can fill a week and many pages which I try to crosslinek to parallels.  I think that as long as you listen to sermonizing--which came out of paganism about the time that singing did-- you will be purposfully prevented from becoming a Disciple. Until then, as Amos, Isaiah and others note, the rituals and music are MEANS to starve you to death for lack of the word.  Here is a small fraction of available information about the Music in Amos which was repeating the musical idolatry in the temple.  I don't claim to be prosey but this is a tiny collection of data about their worship. If I were ten people I could keep us busy just researching and posting raw data which no scholar ever heard about because they thought that it was DRY and the "audience" didn't care.

Link removed per forum rules.

I wail through outer space that the INSTITUTES have gulped up all of the money, created the anxiety Jesus died to remove, and intentionally PREVENTED the laity from knowing or speaking as the ekklesia demands. After 76 years I can say that I have never questioned a preacher who did not get defensive or hostile when I tried to share any truth with them. But, tougher than I, it seems that God has no use for the blind who can be led by the blind.

If the Bible is just dust, you might consider whether you are a christian which means STUDENT.  Jeremiah says that he ATE God's word. You may be in Babylon and need to escape.

Based on your words, I believe you and I view the Bible (and thus "the will of God" and the role of Christians, etc.) differently.  It would be difficult for me to explain further because I lack the patience -- my failing, I admit -- to show someone where I'm coming from via a discussion forum.  As someone who has spent years purposefully attempting to see other viewpoints in order to test my own, I understand how difficult it is to step outside of a personal belief system -- and I wouldn't want to ask that of someone who is unwilling to do so.

That sounds pretty snotty as written, but I mean it respectfully towards you.  You and I will have to agree to disagree.  :o)

I do want to try to understand your point of view but giving up at the beginning doesn't help.  I know that I come across as so set in my ways that I am not willing to change, but I have changed my stance on a few things in the past due to discussions like this.  Sometimes we find that it was a matter of semantics rather than our having so radically different views.

How about trying to answer the questions in my post and I may see your point of view better?

I fear we've got apples and oranges. What IS prophecy?  Speaking the words of God?  How were they used in the past? Prophets made specific statements to individuals or groups.  They expound what has already been taught in Scripture, are consistent with and based in principles from Scripture, but they revealed specific information for a particular person or group.

Scripture can give you a principle or a rule, which is all you need to know regarding that principle or a rule.   Prophecy in the Bible, and prophecy in general gives specific information from God. 

Does God still speak through people? Didn't the Scripture say to eagerly desire the gift of prophecy? Was the Scripture wrong about dreams and visions in the last days?

What Scripture prophecied the end of God speaking to us? I Corinthians 13?

I Corinthians 13 says plainly prophecy will no longer be needed when we see Christ face to face because THEN "we will know fully even as we are fully known."

Or else knowledge is also gone.

Or else we must quit singing that hymn about seeing him face to face since it must have been talking of the coming of the New Testament instead of the Second Coming? 

Nah, we've just got a twisted view of prophecy because some kooks are claiming to be prophets.  My opinion.


Jesus sent the Spirit to everyone. Acts 2:38. 
1Co 12:13  For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.

A barren relationship indeed if we are not on speaking terms with the Spirit.

Hebrews 1:1-2 was speaking of this Dispensational Period, and he went on to write that Jesus was the perfect representation of God and therefore what more needs to be said or proclaimed other than Jesus Christ in regards to God or our relationship with God? He spoke of the difference between this covenant and the earlier one by quoting:

Heb 10:16  "THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS INTO THEIR HEARTS, AND IN THEIR MINDS I WILL WRITE THEM,"
Heb 10:17  then He adds, "THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE."

How does writing words on more paper fully explain writing them on my heart?  They are written on my heart by the Spirit.  The New Covenant is not a new set of instructions, but a relationship, a new life.  It is the transforming power of the Spirit within everyone who believes.

An example is after Christ had come and returned to the Father, the Holy Spirit still needed to tell Phillip to "run up to that chariot."  There is no Scripture for me today that says, "go to that house on 2nd Street" yet the same Holy Spirit who is in me is the same one who told Phillip to "run up to that chariot."  God certainly speaks today in the same way, and if He does, He is speaking more specifically than just the Scriptures.


I would say many prophetic things have been stated by men and women of God for centuries.  Those things are written down or recorded in many places.


Again, Scripture doesn't give you the specific "run up to that chariot" message or "take that job" message or "if you don't shape up I'll judge you" message or "I will take care of you and your family through this crisis message." 

Scripture cannot be that specific regarding individuals or individual groups, but prophecy is exactly that.