Should Christians Expect Miracles Today? Objections and Answers from the Bible, Part 3, by Wayne A. Grudem
15. Why do people speak directly to demons today and command them to leave, rather than just praying and asking God to drive the demon away? Isn’t it safer just to pray to God about this?
In a way, this is similar to asking why Christians should share the gospel with another person rather than simply praying and asking God to reveal the gospel to that person directly. Or why should we speak words of encouragement to a Christian who is discouraged rather than just praying and asking God Himself to encourage that person directly? Why should we speak a word of rebuke or gentle admonition to a Christian, whom we see involved in some kind of sin, rather than just praying and asking God to take care of the sin in that person’s life?
The answer to all these questions is that in the kind of world God has created, He has given us an active role in carrying out His plans, especially His plans for advancing the Kingdom and building up the Church. In all of these cases, our direct involvement and activity is important in addition to our prayers. And so it seems to be in our dealing with demonic forces as well.
As a wise father who does not settle all of his children’s disputes for them, but sometimes sends them back out to the playground to settle a dispute themselves, so our heavenly Father encourages us to enter directly into conflict with demonic forces, in the name of Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thereby He enables us to gain the joy of participating in eternally significant ministry and the joy of triumphing over the destructive power of Satan and his demons in people’s lives. God could certainly deal with demonic attacks every time we prayed and asked Him to do so, and He no doubt sometimes does. But the New Testament pattern seems to be that God ordinarily expects Christians themselves to speak directly to the unclean spirits.
We see this pattern of speaking directly to demons first in the ministry of Jesus. He spoke to the demon troubling a man in the synagogue, saying, “Be silent, and come out of Him!” (Mark 1:25). He commanded the demons in the Gadarene demoniac, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” (Mark 5:8). When Jesus encountered a young boy severely afflicted by a demon, “He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘You dumb and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again'” (Mark 9:25). This was Jesus’ general pattern, for people said about Him, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out” (Luke 4:36).
This pattern was then imitated by Jesus’ 70 disciples, for they said, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” (Luke 10:17). Paul also followed this pattern when he spoke directly to the demon in the soothsaying girl at Philippi, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!”—as a result, we read that “at that moment the spirit left her” (Acts 16:18, NIV). So the question should not be, What seems safe to us? but rather, What example and pattern does the New Testament give to us? True safety would seem to be in following the pattern given us in God’s Word.
16. If we say that people can give prophecies today, doesn’t this mean people can, in effect, add to the words of Scripture? And isn’t this wrong, since the Bible is complete?
No, the gift of prophecy today is not adding words to Scripture. This is because words spoken in prophecies today have less authority than Scripture, and must always be tested by Scripture. We can see this from examining the teaching of the New Testament itself on this gift. We can begin with Paul’s teaching on prophecy in the congregation:
Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting by, let the first be silent. For you can all prophecy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged (1 Corinthians 14:29-31; cf. vv. 24-25).
Following this Scripture, we can define the gift of prophecy as follows:
Prophecy is reporting something that God spontaneously brings to mind.
This is because Paul talks about a “revelation” being made to someone—what we would call something God spontaneously brings to mind. Based on the “revelation,” the person gives a “prophecy” to the congregation—what we might call a report of something God had just brought to mind.
But does this kind of prophecy equal “the word of God?” Certainly not in the sense we usually use the phrase “the word of God,” namely, to refer to the words of the Bible, which have absolute divine authority and can never by wrong. Instead, errors can be made in prophecies that are spoken. That is why Paul says, “Let the others weigh what is said” (1 Corinthians 14:29) and “Do not despise prophesying, but test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21). He could not have said these things if prophecies were the very words of God in the sense Scripture is the very words of God. Therefore, prophecies must have had much less authority than Scripture.
Paul knew that prophetically gifted people at Corinth were not speaking the very words of God because he said, “Did the word of God come forth from you?” (1 Corinthians 14:36, literal translation), implying the answer, no. In Acts 21:4, we read of the disciples at Tyre, “Through the Spirit they told Paul not to go on to Jerusalem.” This seems to be a reference to prophecy directed toward Paul, but Paul disobeyed it! He never would have done this if the prophecy contained God’s very words. Then in Acts 21:10-11, Agabus prophesied that the Jews at Jerusalem would “bind [Paul] and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles,” a prediction that was nearly correct but not quite. The Romans bound Paul (v. 33), and the Jews, rather than delivering him voluntarily, tried to kill him and he had to be rescued by force (v. 32). The prediction was not far off, but it was an inaccuracy in detail that would have called into question the validity of any Old Testament prophet.
God does not make mistakes, and He does not give us erroneous revelations. But we can make mistakes in several ways: (1) We may not perfectly distinguish what is from God and what are our own thoughts. (2) We may misunderstand what is from God. (3) We may not report it with complete accuracy—some of our own ideas and interpretations may be mixed in.38
That is why I think some charismatics make a mistake when they begin a prophecy with, “Thus says the Lord …,” as if they never made a mistake and their prophecies were like the Bible—100 percent God’s words with not the tiniest bit of impurity or imperfection. It would be much better to preface a prophecy with, “I think the Lord is telling me …,” or, “I think God is putting on my heart that …” This will not hurt the effectiveness of anything that is really from the Lord; because if it is from Him, He will bring it home to the heart of the person for whom it is intended.39
The reason people sometimes preface their prophecies with “Thus says the Lord” is that they read the phrase over and over in the Old Testament prophets. But we must realize that the gift of prophecy today is different from the Old Testament prophecies we read in the Bible. Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah had an amazing responsibility—they were able to speak and write words that had absolute divine authority. This was because God not only revealed things to them, He also guaranteed that their report of that revelation was in the very words He wanted—what the Bible later calls “God-breathed” words (2 Timothy 3:16).
Thus the Old Testament prophets could say, “Thus says the Lord,” and the words that followed were the very words of God. The Old Testament prophets wrote their words as God’s words in Scripture for all time (Deuteronomy 18:19; 1 Samuel 8:7; 1 Kings 20:36, etc.).
In the New Testament, people speak and write God’s very words and have them recorded in Scripture. We are surprised, however, to find that Jesus no longer calls them “prophets” but uses a new term, “apostles.” The apostles are the New Testament counterpart to the Old Testament prophets (see Galatians 1:8-9, 11-12; 1 Corinthians 2:13, 14:37; 2 Corinthians 13:3; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 4:8, 15; 2 Peter 3:2, etc.). The apostles and a few others authorized by them (such as Mark, Luke, and the author of Hebrews), had authority to write the words of New Testament Scripture—but not the thousands of ordinary Christians who had prophetic gifts in the Early churches (Acts 2:17-18; 21:4, 9-11; Romans 12:6; 1 Corinthians 14:29-38; Ephesians 4:11, 1 Thessalonians 5:20; 1 Timothy 4:14; 1 John 4:1-3).
In conclusion, prophecy today is merely human words reporting what God has brought to mind, while the prophecies that were written down in the Old Testament were men speaking God’s words to report what God had brought to mind.
In addition to the verses we have considered so far, one other type of evidence suggests that New Testament congregational prophets spoke with less authority than New Testament apostles or Scripture: The problem of successors to the apostles is solved not by encouraging Christians to listen to the prophets but by pointing to the Scriptures.
So Paul, at the end of his life, emphasizes “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15), and the God-breathed character of Scripture for “teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Jude urges his readers to “contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Peter, at the end of his life, encourages his readers to “pay attention” to Scripture, which is like “a lamp shining in a dark place” (2 Peter 1:19-20), and reminds them of the teaching of the apostle Paul “in all his letters” (2 Peter 3:16). In no case do we read exhortations to “give heed to the prophets in your churches” or to “obey the words of the Lord through your prophets.” Yet, certainly prophets were prophesying in many local congregations after the death of the apostles. It seems that they did not have authority equal to the apostles, and the authors of Scripture knew that.
17. But won’t any new revelation today have to come in words from God that are perfect and inerrant and equal to the Bible in authority?
This objection is made, for example, by John MacArthur, who assumes that all revelation from God must be accompanied by inerrant reports of that revelation, as it was in the writing of Scripture. He says,
God’s revelation is complete for now. The canon of Scripture is closed …the close of the New Testament has been followed by the utter absence of new revelation in any form.40 He says there cannot be prophecy today because “every authentic prophetic revelation will be as true, reliable, and inerrant as Scripture itself.”41
MacArthur does not realize the Bible itself talks about “revelation” from God that has other results. For example, whenever someone comes to know God personally in salvation, it is because that person has received a revelation from Christ. “No one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27). And whenever God gives people up to self-destruction because of their sin, God’s wrath is revealed. “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18).
Even today, whenever God convicts someone of sin, it is a form of revelation as well, because Paul says, “If in anything you are otherwise minded, God will reveal that also to you” (Philippians 3:15). When God gives Christians deeper understanding of the Christian faith, that is a kind of revelation, because Paul prays that God “may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him” (Ephesians 1:17).
But new Scripture does not result from any of this. When a new Christian tells how he or she came to know God, that testimony is not new Scripture. When someone tells of conviction of sin, or of deeper knowledge of God, that testimony is not new Scripture. Similarly, when God gives a spontaneous revelation that results in prophecy, this does not result in new Scripture. MacArthur’s assumption is simply incorrect.
18. Doesn’t the use of prophecy today deny the sufficiency of Scripture?
No, it does not, because prophecy should never function with the absolute authority of Scripture (see above). It should never challenge the unique role the Bible plays in our lives. Rather, it functions on a level something like the kind of authority we give to advice from a friend, or to a subjective “intuition” or “gut feeling” about what to do in a situation. We do not follow these in every case (for they may be wrong), but we do not ignore them either. Often they help us make the right decision. So it is with the gift of prophecy: God can use it to make us aware of things we would otherwise overlook, but He will never use it to add new doctrinal teachings or new moral commands to what is in the Bible.
People who make this objection about prophecy challenging “the sufficiency of Scripture” should be asked to define carefully what they mean by the phrase “the sufficiency of Scripture.” This is often not done, and confusion enters into the discussion. To some people the phrase means, (1) Scripture tells us God’s will so we should allow no subjective factors in guidance on decisions today. To others it means, (2) Scripture reveals God’s words to us, so there can be no more revelation from God to us today. To still others it means, (3) the canon42Â is closed so no more words are to be added to Scripture.
But in theological studies generally, “the sufficiency of Scripture” has a somewhat different sense, one that follows from the fact that the canon is closed. It means, (4) Scripture now contains all the words of God He intends His people to have in the Church age, and, therefore, it now contains everything we need God to tell us for salvation, for right doctrine, and for knowing His will for us. It means, therefore, we are not to add to the moral commands of Scripture and demand that people obey new moral principals we have made up, going beyond Scripture. And it means we are not to add to the doctrinal teachings of Scripture, demanding that people believe new teachings we have made up. What God has told us is sufficient for knowing what He wants us to believe and do.
Sometimes in discussions about spiritual gifts today, people have in mind senses (1) or (2) above, and, therefore, by their definition the gift of prophecy today is not possible. But when people who allow for prophecy today say they believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, they usually mean sense (3) or (4), both of which are consistent with the continuation of prophecy today. Careful definition is needed before the discussion can proceed, or people will simply talk past one another.
Once we understand that we are talking about the sufficiency of Scripture in sense (4) above, we can then realize that the Bible does not tell us everything—a fact everyone will agree to! Why should we think it impossible that God would bring to our mind some information that is not in Scripture but that would be helpful in a situation? Prophecy today can often do this, bringing to mind facts about a situation, facts we had forgotten or of which we were not aware. For example, Scripture tells me I should pray; it does not tell me that my missionary friend in Japan is in need of prayer right now.
A real-life example may help make this clear. When I was praying with friends recently a women in the group said, “While we were praying I saw a picture in my mind of two angry faces talking, and it looked like fire was coming out of their mouths.” Then another women said, “I think one of the faces was me. I’ve been gossiping and spreading dissension by some things I’ve said to other people in this room.” There was silence, then the woman who first saw the mental picture said, “I think the other face was me. I’ve been gossiping too!” A church elder who was present then read James 3:5, “So the tongue is a little member and boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!” After that, a beautiful time of repentance and forgiveness took place, including tears.
Now that type of event does not challenge a true understanding of “the sufficiency of Scripture” at all. Scripture tells me gossip is wrong; it does not tell me two people in the room have been gossiping (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:24-25). Scripture tells me to go to my brother if he has something against me; it does not tell me that Robert has been angry with me about something I said. In addition, out of all the verses in the Bible, God will sometimes use prophecy to bring to mind exactly the right Scripture passage for the situation at hand. This happened to me recently at a meeting for our church. I had awakened that morning with a passage from 2 Samuel on my mind, and when I read it without comment at the meeting, the Holy Spirit used it to bring conviction to our hearts and tears to our eyes.
What a rich blessing this is for the New Covenant Age (from Pentecost until Christ returns)! Here is a great privilege we have over believers in the time of the Old Testament, when only a few people had the gift of prophecy. On the day of Pentecost, Peter said that the New Covenant Age had begun, because Joel’s prophecy was fulfilled:
And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; yes, and on my menservants and my maid servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy (Acts 2:17-18). Peter does not say only the apostles would prophesy. He does not say only church leaders would see visions and dreams. He says the Holy Spirit is going to give these things to old and young, to men and women, to parents and children. That means all sorts of people in the Church.
And Peter does not say this will be limited to the first few years of the Church (as some would tell us). Joel was predicting the time of the New Covenant, the time of the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit on God’s people. That is the age we still live in today—and these are the blessings we should yet expect from God today.
19. If we allow for prophecy and things such as hearing from the Lord today, aren’t we in danger of being led astray by an overemphasis on subjective guidance? Haven’t many Christian groups in the past made shipwreck of their faith by following such subjective guidance and using “The Lord told me” to justify all sorts of serious errors?
Yes, there is a danger of excessive reliance on subjective impressions for guidance, and that must be clearly guarded against. People who continually seek subjective “messages” from God to guide their lives must be cautioned that subjective personal guidance is not a primary function of New Testament prophecy. They need to place much more emphasis on Scripture and seeking God’s sure wisdom written there.
I readily admit that many mistakes have been made in this area in the past. People have placed an unhealthy emphasis on subjective guidance, neglected the teachings of Scripture, and fallen into error. Usually this has been because they did not realize that prophecy in the Church age is not the word of God, and can frequently contain errors. But here the question must be, Are misunderstandings and abuses necessary for the gift of prophecy to function? If we are to argue that mistakes and abuses of a gift make the gift itself invalid, then we would have to reject Bible teaching too (for many church leaders have led people astray). The abuse of a gift does not mean we must prohibit the proper use of the gift, unless it can be shown that there cannot not be proper use—that all use has to be abuse.
Many charismatic writers would agree with my cautions against focusing on prophecy for personal guidance, as the following quotations indicate:
Michael Harper (Church of England):
Prophecies which tell other people what they are to do—are to be regarded with great suspicion.43 Dennis and Rita Bennett (American Episcopalians):
We should also be careful of personal, directive prophecy, especially outside the ministry of a mature and submitted man of God. Unrestrained “personal prophecy” did much to undermine the movement of the Holy Spirit which began at the turn of the century …Christians are certainly given words for one another “in the Lord” …and such words can be most refreshing and helpful, but there must be a witness of the Spirit on the part of the person receiving the words, and extreme caution should be used in receiving any alleged directive or predictive prophecy. Never undertake any project simply because you were told to by presumed prophetic utterance or interpretation of tongues, or by a presumed word of wisdom, or knowledge. Never do something just because a friend comes to you and says: “The Lord told me to tell you to do thus and thus.” If the Lord has instructions for you, He will give you a witness in your own heart, in which case the words coming from a friend …will be a confirmation to what God has already been showing you. Your guidance must also agree with Scripture.44 Donald Gee (Assemblies of God):
[There are] grave problems raised by the habit of giving and receiving personal “messages” of guidance through the gifts of the Spirit …The Bible gives a place for such direction from the Holy Spirit …But it must be kept in proportion …An examination of the Scriptures will show us that as a matter of fact the early Christians did not continually receive such voices from heaven. In most cases they made their decisions by the use of what we often call “sanctified common-sense” and lived quite normal lives …Many of our errors where spiritual gifts are concerned arise when we want the extraordinary and exceptional to be made the frequent and habitual. Let all who develop excessive desire for “messages” through the gifts take warning from the wreckage of past generations as well as of contemporaries …The Holy Scriptures are a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.45 Donald Bridge (British charismatic pastor):
The illuminist constantly finds that “God tells him” to do things …Illuminists are often very sincere, very dedicated, and possessed of a commitment to obey God that shames more cautious Christians. Nevertheless they are treading a dangerous path. Their ancestors have trodden it before, and always with disastrous results in the long run. Inner feelings and special promptings are by their very nature subjective. The Bible provides our objective guide.46 On the other hand, many cessationists (i.e., people who don’t believe in miraculous gifts such as prophecy today) are skeptical of any element of subjectivity in the realm of guidance. This is the opposite mistake. The people who make this objection are often the ones who need this subjective process most in their own Christian lives. This gift requires waiting on the Lord, listening for Him, hearing His prompting in our hearts. For Christians who are completely evangelical, doctrinally sound, intellectual, “objective” believers, probably what is needed most is the strong balancing influence of a more vital “subjective” relationship with the Lord in everyday life. And these people are also the ones who have the least likelihood of being led into error, for they already place great emphasis on solid grounding in the Word of God.
20. Paul says that the Church is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets” (Ephesians 2:20). Doesn’t this mean that prophets, like apostles, were only given for the foundational years of the Church when they needed new words from God, but that they don’t exist today?
I think this verse does not talk about the ordinary prophets who functioned in the various churches at the time of the New Testament. Rather, I think this verse refers to the apostles (who were the foundation of the Church) and calls them “apostle-prophets.” The reasons for this are as follows.
Sometimes in the New Testament the term “prophet” (Greek prophétés) is used to refer to the apostles. This is in contexts where there is emphasis on an external spiritual influence (from the Holy Spirit) under which the apostles spoke. Two examples of this are found in Ephesians 2:20 and 3:5.
Here Paul cannot be speaking of all the prophets in local congregations at that time, for prophets are said to be the “foundation” of the Church—and not just individual churches but the Church generally. As well, they are said to be the group to whom the “mystery” was revealed that Gentiles should be included, having equal standing in the Church (Ephesians 3:5-6). These things were not true of all the believers who had the gift of prophecy in local congregations in Corinth, Thessalonica, Rome, Tyre, Ephesus, etc. Certainly we cannot say that all of the believers who were converted and began to prophesy in local congregations decades after the Church had begun were the “foundation” of the Church universal. Nor can we say that they were the ones to whom God had revealed the fact of Gentile inclusion in the Church. But these things were true of the apostles in their foundational role in the the Church, as God revealed to them the mystery of the Gentile inclusion (cf. Acts 10:9-36; 11:4-18; 15:6-18; Galatians 2:1-2, 7-9).
This identification of the apostles as prophets in Ephesians 2:20 and 3:5 is made more clear by the grammatically legitimate translation “the apostles who are also prophets.”47Â But in Ephesians 4:11, in a different context (where Paul is talking about gifts given to the Church generally), Paul uses a different construction to distinguish “apostles” from “prophets” and shows that he is referring in this case to two distinct groups.48
If someone takes another view of this verse, and thinks it refers to two groups, “apostles and prophets,” it would not really affect my understanding of the gift of prophecy in New Testament generally. This is because, according to this understanding, Paul would be talking about a very small and restricted group of “prophets”—people who were like the apostles in that they were the foundation of the universal Church, and they received the revelation of the full inclusion of Gentiles in the Church. Ephesians 2:20 and 3:5 would then be talking about this specialized group. For information on the nature of the gift of prophecy in ordinary New Testament churches, however, we would have to look at verses where ordinary congregational prophets were discussed, such as 1 Corinthians 12-14, 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21, etc.
Another instance where an apostle is viewed as a prophet is the apostle John in the book of Revelation (cf. Revelation 1:1-3). The term “prophecy” is appropriate to this book because of its emphasis on revelation given by God. The book of Revelation is an example of a prophecy given through an apostle and therefore possessing absolute divine authority—it is part of Scripture.
21. When Paul says, “As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away” (1 Corinthians 13:8), doesn’t he mean that prophecies and tongues would cease early in the history of the Church?
Some have argued that 1 Corinthians 13:8 means that Paul expected prophecy and tongues to cease early in the history of the Church. But does the passage really teach that? We must look at the larger context:
Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully even as I have been fully understood, so faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:8-13). In verse 9, Paul gives the reason why prophecy and tongues will cease: he says, “Our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away” (1 Corinthians 13:9-10. So he says that prophecy will pass away at a certain time, namely, “when the perfect comes.”
But when is that? It has to be the time when the Lord returns. This is because it has to be the same time as indicated by the word “then” in verse 12: “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully even as I have been fully understood.” To see “face to face” is an Old Testament phrase for seeing God personally (see Genesis 32:30; Exodus 33:11; Deuteronomy 34:10; Judges 6:22; Ezekiel 20:35—these are the only Old Testament occurences of this Greek phrase or its Hebrew equivalent, and they all refer to seeing God.) The time when I shall know “as I have been known” also must refer to the Lord’s return (1 John 3:2; Revelation 22:4).
Some have argued that “when the perfect comes” refers to the time when the New Testament canon is complete. (The last New Testament book written, Revelation, was written in AD 90 at the latest, about 35 years after Paul wrote 1 Corinthians.) But would the Corinthians ever have understood that from what Paul wrote? Is there any mention of a collection of New Testament books or a New Testament canon anywhere in the context of 1 Corinthians 13? Such an idea is foreign to the context. Moreover, such a statement would not fit Paul’s purpose in the argument. Would it be persuasive to argue as follows: We can be sure that love will never end, for we know that it will last more than 35 years? This would hardly be a convincing argument. The context requires rather that Paul be contrasting this age with the age to come, and saying that love will endure into eternity.
Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones observes that the view that connects “when the perfect comes” (1 Corinthians 13:10) to the time of the completion of the New Testament encounters another difficulty. “It means that you and I, who have the Scriptures open before us, know much more than the apostle Paul of God’s truth …It means that we are altogether superior …even to the apostles themselves, including the apostle Paul! It means that we are now in a position in which …’we know, even as also we are known’ by God …indeed, there is only one word to describe such a view, it is nonsense.”49 John Calvin, referring to 1 Corinthians 13:8-10, says, “It is stupid of people to make the whole of this discussion apply to the intervening time.”50
This means we have a clear biblical statement that Paul expected the gift of prophecy (and, by implication, probably all spiritual gifts51 to continue through the entire Church age and to function for the benefit of the Church until the Lord returns.52
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Notes
38. It is therefore not true (as some assume) that every revelation from God must result in words equal to Scripture in authority as Acts 21:10-11, 32-33 suggests.
39. Now it is trite that Agabus uses a similar phrase (“Thus says the Holy Spirit”) in Acts 21:11, but the same words (Greek tade legei) are used by Christians writers just after the time of the New Testament to introduce very general paraphrases or greatly expanded interpretations of what is being reported. (See Ignatius, Epistle to the Philadelphians 7:1-2 about AD 108] and Epistle of Barnabus 6:8; 9:2,5 [AD 70-100]). The phrase can apparently mean, “This is generally (or approximately) what the Holy Spirit is saying to us.
40. John MacArthur, Jr., Charismatic Chaos, pp. 60-61
41. Ibid., p. 70
42. The canon is the list of books included in the Bible.
43. Michael Harper, Prophecy: A Gift for the Body of Christ (Logos, 1964), p. 26.
44. Dennis and Rita Bennett, The Holy Spirit and You (Eastbourne, England: Kingsway, 1971), p. 107.
45. Donald Gee, Spiritual Gifts in the Work of Ministry Today (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1963), pp. 51-52.
46. Donald Bridge, Signs and Wonders Today (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 1985), p. 183.
47. See the extended argument in Wayne Grudem, The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today, pp. 49-51. The same grammatical construction (article-noun-kai[“and”]-noun) is used in Ephesians 4:11, not to refer to prophets, but to refer to “pastors and teachers” in a phrase that many people translate not “pastors and teachers” (two groups) but “pastor-teachers” (one group). I think the translation “pastor-teachers” is appropriate in this verse.
48. The phrase tous de prophétas in Ephesians 4:11 repeats the definite article before the noun “prophets,” and so is translated differently, showing that Paul has a different group in mind when he used the word “prophets” in this context—he was referring to Christians in general who had the gift of prophecy, not just to the apostles.
49. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Prove All Things, edited by Christopher Catherwood (Eastbourne, England; Kingsway, 1985), pp. 32-33.
50. John Calvin, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, trans. by J. W. Fraser, ed. by D. W. Torrance and T. F. Torrance (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1960), p. 281.
51. Compare 1 Corinthians 13:8 (“tongues” and “knowledge”) with 12:8, 10 (part of a broader list of spiritual gifts) and see G. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT, ed., F. F. Bruce; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), p. 644 and n. 21.
52. I think the office of apostle ended in the first century AD, after all the books of the Bible were written. See Wayne Grudem, “The Office of Apostle,” in The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today, pp. 269-276. However, I do not think of “apostle” as a gift but rather a church office (somewhat like the offices of elder and deacon, which began in the first century and continue today.) *Editor’s note: It should be noted that a large number of Pentecostals and charismatics disagree with Dr. Grudem on this point.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. ©Copyright 1946, 1952, and 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. Quotations from the KJV—King James Version are public domain.
This four-part series is taken from Gary S. Greig and Kevin N. Springer, eds., The Kingdom and the Power: Are Healing and the Spiritual Gifts Used by Jesus and the Early Church Meant for the Church Today? A Biblical Look at How to Bring the Gospel to the World with Power (Ventura, CA: Regal
