I received another good questions this week on a Connection Card.  Are there still prophets today?  This was submitted by someone with many friends who are Mormons, who call their leaders Prophets.  It is a good question that requires some thinking and definition of terms.

In general terms, a prophet is one who speaks for God.  In this very general sense, any Biblical preacher (like myself) is a prophet.  However, I speak on the authority of the Bible, not on the authority of revelation given to me directly by God.  The Old Testament prophets (and a few in the New Testament like John the Baptist, Simeon and Anna, a prophetess) were given information directly by God.  They didn’t interpret and explain the Scriptures.  They spoke directly from God as led by the Holy Spirit.

I believe that kind of prophecy and those kind of prophets ceased when the New Testament was complete.  At that point, we had received all of the revelation from God that was needed.  No more information was given.  The very end of the New Testament closes with a warning, “If anyone adds anything to them (the words of the prophecy of this book), God will add to him the plagues described in this book.”

So I do not believe that prophets–like the Old Testament prophets or like John–exist. They ceased with the completion of the writing of the Bible.  God, through His Holy Spirit, still guides and leads preachers, but it is the text of the Bible that is the ultimate guide, not the words of the preachers.

The New Testament warns of the dangers of false prophets in the last days, so it is no surprise that many are claiming to be prophets today.  (See Matthew 24:11 and 2 Peter 2:1-3 among others.)  We can know a false prophet in two ways.  First, his words do not come true.  (Harold Camping, for example, prophesied the return of Christ last year.  His prophecy was false.)  Secondly, we know it by checking out the words of the prophet by comparing their words to the Bible.  (The Mormons, for example, claim a “latter day” revelation of Jesus.  It does not square with the Jesus pictured in the New Testament, however.  So we can consider it a false prophecy.)

Our ultimate guides of truth today are the words of the Old and New Testaments, not the words of today’s prophets.  (As a preacher myself, it is imperative that I do my study and make sure that my teachings are Biblical.  I claim no direct knowledge of God or about God other than what I have learned from His Word.)  God does speak to me, but only in complete harmony with the Word.