The Nature of Prophecy

The Fundamental Qualities and essential character of Prophecy may be described as:

The Grace and Love of God as displayed by obedience through the revelatory utterance of a person, as revealed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, that will encourage, edify, comfort or exhort the church or will bring a revelation of God or the conviction of sin to the unbeliever.

It is the practice of God speaking to his people and to his creation. It is therefore, beholden on the church to speak prophetically to a dying and dead society so that life might arise.

The Church should and must handle the prophetic with a loving care, as it should for any of the precious things of God.

Therefore, it is important for each local church leadership to determine what methods they will use for the administration of the gift of prophecy and what guidelines they issue for weighing the prophetic.

In our home church, if someone has a prophetic word we have set the following guidelines:

All prophecies should be given from the front through a micraphone to ensure everyone can here. This is particularly helpful if your church has a loop for deaf people.
The permission of the person who has been choosen to lead the meeting must be sought and given before a prophecy is given. This is helpful for those who are starting out in prophecy. It also allows the Holy Spirit to flow in the meeting and brings order.
Each prophetic word has a preamble about the need to weigh and test the word. This re-inforces the church policy.
The person leading the meeting will weigh the word as will the pastors and will either follow up the prophetic word or make some comment.

While this is not complete it does give a flavour of what is needed for a church to be healthy. Your church may have different guidelines, which is fine, aslong as they are consistent , scriptural and are known by the members of the church.

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