Introduction...continued

Comparing Pre & Post Pentecost Prophecy

William Kay makes the following points in his book "Prophecy"(2)

"The very fact that Christian prophecy was judged and that no penalty is laid down anywhere in the New Testament for incorrect prophecies shows that prophecies before and after Pentecost were on a completely different foundation. False or incorrect Old Testament prophecies led to the death of the prophet (Deut 18.20). In the early church nothing of the sort took place.

Beyond this, there are other major differences between Old and New Testament prophecy, which derive largely from the overall differences between the two covenants. The old covenant ushered in a period where a correct relationship with God was to be attained by keeping a divinely given law, the Law of Moses. The prophet in Israel had three main tasks. The first was to remind the people and their rulers if the law had been broken and what the terrible consequences of such disobedience would be. The second task was to aid the rulers of Israel, especially the king, where necessary. In a sense the government of God took place through the king and the divine revelation brought by the prophet to the king. Before the monarchy in Israel God governed the people directly, and their request for a king was effectively a rejection of God's own kingship (1 Sam 8.7). After the monarchy (which was instituted at the hand of a prophet, that is, Samuel), the prophet continued to have access to the throne, and when the monarchy died out after the Babylonian exile, prophecy soon followed.

The third task of the prophet of Israel was to prepare Israel for the coming Messiah - to inspire hope in moments of national calamity and to rebuild Israel's faith in the hours of darkness.

When we look at the Old Testament prophet, then, we find that he frequently speaks to the king of Israel and that sometimes he pronounces oracles of judgement against foreign powers (Amos 1). In the New Testament we never find any Christian prophet knock on the door of the Roman governors or write a letter to Caesar. The interaction between the political power of the day and the prophet is completely absent in the New Testament church. There was no sense in which the government of God (technically called "theocracy") was continued via a secular ruling authority and with the Christian prophet at his right hand. The Old Testament pattern is different from the New Testament pattern because the role of the church in relation to the world is not the same as the role of Israel in relation to the world. The church operates under a better covenant and with higher goals (see the Epistle to the Hebrews).

Several serious misunderstandings are fostered by equating the Christian prophet with the Old Testament prophet. It is a great deal more helpful, as we have shown, to see the Christian prophet in the shadow of Christ himself and in relation to the other ministries, which have been placed by God in the church. If we make the Old Testament prophet a pattern for the work of the New Testament prophet, we shall throw the church back into legalism of the old covenant." (used with the permission of the author)

It is important that we do not give the same weight to Christian prophecy as we do to the scriptures; in fact it is by scripture including the Old Testament books of the prophets that we weigh Christian prophecy. Old Testament prophecy as seen in the Old Testament books of the prophets is included in the infallibility of scripture whereas Christian prophecy can make no such claims.

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