The role of prophecy in the direction of the charismatic movement.
This article is part of a series, re-publishing the 1995 book ‘Blessing the Church?’, a critical appraisal of the Toronto movement. Click here for previous instalments.
Having looked at the roots of the Toronto outpouring in the preceding decades, we now turn to the charismatic movement itself and its relationship with prophecy.
Prophecy is the revelation of divine truth conveyed to a human being by the Spirit of God. The Bible provides a record of God speaking to people from Genesis to Revelation. The prophet was the one to whom God regularly spoke and he bore the responsibility of declaring the word of God to the people. The office of the prophet was recognised in Israel from the time of Moses whose brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, heard God say to them,
When a prophet of the LORD is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions, I speak to him in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles (Num 12:6-8)
Moses himself looked forward to the day when all true believers would be able to hear directly from the Lord, “I wish that all the LORD's people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” (Num 11:29).
The Prophet Joel said that this would happen in 'the last days'. Concerning those days, he prophesied, “...I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days” (Joel 2:28-29).
The Apostle Peter saw the relevance of that prophecy on the Day of Pentecost, which he believed heralded the beginning of 'the last days'. In the streets of Jerusalem when he addressed the crowd he quoted Joel, but added the words “and they will prophesy”. Clearly he did this to emphasise the significance of prophecy, of hearing from God.
It is clear from the New Testament record that the purpose of prophecy in the early Church was to enable the Church to be rightly guided by the Lord in carrying out its mission to fulfil the Great Commission given to them by Jesus to go into all the world carrying the good news of salvation to all peoples.
It is clear from the New Testament that the purpose of prophecy was to enable the Church to be rightly guided by the Lord in fulfilling the Great Commission.
Nowhere in the New Testament is it said that the ability to hear from God would be withdrawn or that God would cease to communicate with his people through the Holy Spirit. There are, however, many warnings in the New Testament concerning false prophets and clear instruction is given about handling prophecy and testing anything that purports to be divine revelation.
Jesus himself gave severe warnings: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognise them” (Matt 7:15-16).
He added the warning that these false prophets would have the ability to exercise supernatural power and 'perform many miracles' in his name, but they would be false prophets not commissioned by the Lord. Those warnings were not given simply for the apostolic age but for generations to come.
Before examining the role of prophecy in directing the development of the charismatic movement, it is important to establish biblical principles, to understand the role of the prophet and how to identify the false prophet.
The Role of the Prophet
Throughout the history of ancient Israel, God always sent prophets in times of crisis. He did not simply allow judgment to fall upon the people without sending abundant warnings. These warning signs were part of his love and mercy shown to his people.
The prophet's task in each generation was to recognise and rightly interpret the signs. As Amos observed, “Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7).
It is important to note that God never sent prophets to Israel to announce blessing. He never sent his prophets to herald times of peace and prosperity. It was the false prophets who came with these messages. God raised up true prophets in times of impending disaster to warn the people, to call them to repentance and to return to the Lord their God, that the disaster might be averted.
Warnings about false prophets were given not just for the apostolic age, but for generations to come.
God did not need to send prophets to announce times of blessing because that was the normal state in which his people should have been living. But the enjoyment of God's blessing was always conditional upon the faithfulness of his people. When they turned aside to the worship of other gods, or became involved in pacts and treaties with other nations that drew them away from the Lord, or when the lusts and desires of the world turned their hearts away from the paths of righteousness, then God withheld his blessing and things began to go wrong. These were the warning signs picked up by the prophets.
The whole purpose of the prophetic ministry is to bring warnings of danger and of the inevitable consequences of turning away from God. This basic principle of the prophetic ministry is expressed by Jeremiah in his dispute with Hananiah, who was foretelling a time of blessing and revival in the fortunes of the nation. Jeremiah said,
From early times the prophets who preceded you and me have prophesied war, disaster and plague against many countries and great kingdoms. But the prophet who prophesies peace will be recognised as one truly sent by the LORD only if his prediction comes true. (Jer 28:8-9)
This is an important statement which touches the very heart of the prophetic ministry and gives the key to its understanding within the context of the history of Israel. Hananiah's message was delivered with all the authority of the true prophetic word as though it came directly from the mouth of the living God.
This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two years I will bring back to this place all the articles of the LORD's house that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon removed from here and took to Babylon. I will also bring back to this place Jehoiachin, son of Jehoiakim king of Judah and all the other exiles from Judah who went to Babylon,’ declares the LORD, ‘for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.’ (Jer 28:2-4)
This sounded like a true prophecy. It was just what the people wanted to hear and Hananiah's popularity rating must have soared whereas Jeremiah's standing in Jerusalem plunged to a new low. He was shunned as the man of doom and gloom.
There were serious consequences of Hananiah's false prophecy. It not only gave the people false hopes, but it actually turned them away from hearing the true word of God. It became a stumbling-block to their repentance and their turning back to God and coming under his covering and receiving his blessing.
God did not need to send prophets to announce times of blessing because that was the normal state in which his people should have been living.
False Prophecy
False prophecy always does great harm to the people of God. It not only deceives and misleads them, building up false hopes, but it actually becomes a stumbling-block to the word of God. It deceives the faithful people who trust these prophets and turns their hearts away from God so that they fail to heed what he is saying to them.
It was a shattering experience for Jeremiah who saw the inevitable consequences of unfaithfulness and clearly foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem. He loved his nation and he loved the city where he exercised his ministry so he was heartbroken to see the devastating effects of false prophecy, “My heart is broken within me; all my bones tremble,” he said (Jer 23:9). He went on to plead with the people:
Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. (Jer 23:16)
Jeremiah heard God saying, “I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied. But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds” (Jer 23:21-22).
Eventually Jeremiah had to face the Prophet Hananiah, although several times he had tried to avoid the confrontation. In the end he said to him, “Listen, Hananiah! The LORD has not sent you, yet you have persuaded this nation to trust in lies.” Jeremiah saw the false prophecy for what it really was, “You have preached rebellion against the LORD” (Jer 28:15-16).
False prophecy always incites the people to rebellion against the will of God. This was clearly seen by Moses when he taught the people how to discern between the true prophet and the false. He said that the false prophet, “must be put to death, because he preached rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow” (Deut 13:5).
It was no doubt with this in mind that Jeremiah said that God would remove Hananiah from the face of the earth (Jer 28:16).
He recognised the very serious consequences of false prophecy which misleads the people and blinds them to the true word of God. The effects of false prophecy are exactly the same today. It is for this reason that we need to distinguish clearly between true guidance from God which enables the Church to fulfil the mission of Christ in bringing the word of God to the world, and that which comes from the human imagination or from another spirit. We see today a battle for the truth that bears many similarities to that which was fought in the early Church.
False prophecy always incites the people to rebellion against the will of God.
Most of the epistles in the New Testament were written to counter false doctrine by establishing the truth and there are numerous warnings from the apostles that anyone teaching a different gospel or deviating from the truth revealed to them by the Lord Jesus was teaching heresy. Paul warned the Corinthians not to accept anyone who preached a different Jesus or a different gospel from the one they had accepted through him (2 Cor 11:3-5) and he warned Timothy, “What you have heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching…guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us” (2 Tim 1:13-14).
At the beginning of the 20th Century a similar warning appeared in one of the earliest prophecies to emerge from the Pentecostal movement. It was given in Azusa Street in 1906,
In the last days three things will happen in the great Pentecostal movement:
There will be an over-emphasis on power rather than on righteousness.
There will be an over-emphasis on praise to a God they no longer pray to.
There will be an over-emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit, rather than on the Lordship of Christ.
The Charismatic Movement
Prophecy was regularly exercised in the Pentecostal movement throughout the first half of the 20th Century. It was given a place of special importance within the Apostolic Churches. The office of the prophet is one of the ministries referred to by Paul in Ephesians 4 and prophecy is also one of the gifts or 'manifestations of the Spirit' in the list given by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12.
It is therefore not surprising that prophecy should have featured strongly amongst charismatics both as a ministry and as a spiritual gift exercised by any believer within a local church setting. There are two new factors which have affected the use of prophecy in the charismatic movement and distinguished it from early Pentecostalism.
They are:
1. Lack of organisation
There has been a lack of organisation in the charismatic movement which has not only formed a wide variety of independent fellowships with no regulatory body, but has also spread across the denominations.
The Pentecostal movement, by contrast, established denominational structures at a fairly early stage, providing accountability for local pastors and a point of reference for the establishment of agreed biblically-based teaching and practice. Within local fellowships individual church members exercised spiritual gifts under pastoral authority.
Most of the epistles in the New Testament were written to counter false doctrine by establishing the truth.
The charismatic movement has generally lacked these safeguards, although that would not be true of all local churches. In many mainline churches touched by the renewal the ministers simply did not know how to handle spiritual gifts. I myself spent four years in theological college but when I was ordained I had received no teaching at all on the spiritual gifts. They were deemed to have ceased at the end of the apostolic age and were therefore irrelevant for today. My experience would be typical of all ministers up until the 1970s and indeed for many beyond that date!
Additionally, many individual believers who experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit were in churches where the minister did not recognise, or actually suppressed, the spiritual gifts. They therefore formed small house fellowships and made up their own rules. As has already been noted in earlier chapters, some of these fellowships broke away from mainline churches or from Brethren Assemblies and formed the independent charismatic streams we have today.
2. Latter Rain influence
The second major factor influencing the exercise of prophecy in the charismatic movement was the Latter Rain Revival. This has been dealt with in some length in previous articles so we will not be dealing in detail with those prophecies here.
It is, however, essential to note that the movement itself began in response to a prophecy, and prophecy became one of the major distinguishing marks of the movement. Indeed, the original prophecy which gave birth to the movement said that people would be brought into the Latter Rain blessing “by prophecy and the laying on of hands”. This was immediately seen to be fulfilled when five students at the Sharon Bible School came forward to receive the blessing after their names had been revealed by prophecy.
One of the main areas of controversy between the leaders of the Sharon group and the Pentecostal denominations was the manner in which the former used prophecy, especially in relation to the place of apostles and prophets in the present-day Church. The Latter Rain leaders taught that revival and the restoration of the Church was being effected through 'end times' apostles and prophets specially ordained by God for the purpose. The prophets provided the revelation from God as to what the Church should both believe and do, and the apostles provided the authority structure to put things into practice. This thinking has of course become quite prevalent in the charismatic movement over the last 25 years.
However, the leaders of the Pentecostal denominations (particularly the Assemblies of God) soon charged the Latter Rain leadership with seeking to exercise authority over people and churches by the use of directive prophecy. They were also concerned about what they saw as 'novices' prophesying in these circumstances and accordingly rejected both as being unbiblical.
The Latter Rain movement began in response to a prophecy – and prophecy later became a major distinguishing mark of the ‘revival’.
It was a strong belief in both the Latter Rain and Manifest Sons of God movements that prophetic revelation, giving new understandings and interpretations of Scripture, was one of the marks of the last days restoration of the Church. This view has had an ongoing pervasive influence in the charismatic movement and may well account for the fact that often prophecy is accepted when it has little scriptural basis, being viewed as acceptable on the grounds of it being 'prophetic revelation'. Although most charismatics would deny this, in practice, they have treated contemporary prophetic revelations as the direct word of God on a par with Scripture.
These views are not of course new to 'end times' teachings. Variations of them were responsible for the emergence of strange and heretical doctrines in earlier generations; for example, the heresy of the Free Spirit which broke out in one form or another throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. This heresy, which always involved prophetic revelation, sought to offer people the blessing of receiving the Holy Spirit in such measure that they became like Jesus and that, like him, they could become divine. It was seen in Tanchelm and his followers in 12th-Century Flanders, in the Franciscan Spirituals who followed the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore and in the Amaurians of 13th Century France.
Next week: The two strands of prophecy emerging from the charismatic movement.
