This is the End. There will be no other era of history after
this but a new creation. The prophets announce these shifts in epoch, they
point to their coming and indeed in one sense the Old Testament prophets
pointed to the Kingdom of Heaven. But in these last days there is but one
Prophet, the fulfillment of all prophetic typologies. There will be no new prophets
to announce a new era. The prophecies have all been spoken – at least the
revelatory prophecies have. That's how short the time is. Everything is done –
Christ is coming. Even so come, Lord Jesus.****
Those who claim to be revelatory prophets today are deceived
deceivers. There are no more prophets for this age – there's nothing to
prophesy about. The word has been given.
How then do we explain the apostles? They are prophets as
Ephesians 2 and 2 Peter 3 make clear. They wrote the New Testament. How then
could they (being after Christ) be prophets?
This is why the apostles are to be understood as unique.
There are no more apostles. They were men specifically and personally selected
by Christ or in the case of Matthias by the apostles themselves. Over the
course of the creation of the New Testament canon and during the extraordinary
days of the establishment of the Church, the circle seemed to widen beyond the
Twelve – to Paul and eventually it would seem to the brothers of Christ, men
such as James and Jude. And we could of
course include Luke and Mark but they are often explained in terms of being
under the aegis of other apostles, Paul and Peter for example.
During this brief epoch of signs and wonders there were others
granted inspired speech and able to perform miracles and other supernatural
wonders. These prophets and even prophetesses were no apostles (properly
speaking) and their roles (and sometimes offices) were temporary and limited to
the apostolic age.
These men, the apostles were not prophets of the type to be
repeated but prophets sent to establish the Church with signs and wonders, to
write the words of the New Covenant canon. They would be gone in a generation.
Their calling was unique and to them alone was the promise that they would be
able (through the ministrations of the Paraclete) to recall (and thus record)
the words and deeds of Christ (John 14.26). Sent specifically by Christ they
are the extension of his prophetic voice, the establishers of His Body as it
were.
As such they do not represent a challenge to Christ's claim
as the Final or Last Days Prophet, the anti-type to the prophets of old. The
apostles are inseparable from Christ and thus to know Him is to know them. This
concept is elaborated in 2 Corinthians as Paul lays out the office and its
calling and this concept is also closely wedded to our understanding of Scripture.
Scripture Alone (Sola Scriptura)
requires a prioritisation of the New Testament and when this is understood in
connection to the Christ-apostles nexus
we can say that our understanding of Sola
Scriptura is rooted in Soli Apostoli
– the authority of the apostles alone. They are the prophets of the New Covenant
as they are inseparable from the Final Prophet. And it is on the basis of this
principle that questions of canon were to be considered. Soli Apostoli is also tied to and indeed is another way of
expressing the Early Church concept of the Regula
Fidei or Rule of Faith. The New Testament is the Apostolic Tradition
written and preserved.
There are no epochs and as such there are no more prophets.
Christ is the last, the apostles are gone. Anyone who claims to be a revelatory
prophet presents a challenge to Christ and His claims and as such must be
rejected. The extraordinary gifts ended with the establishment of the Church
under the apostles. The gift of prophecy faded away. This is not to say that
the Hold Spirit cannot work and do extraordinary things during this time but no
one can claim the office, the gifts or even the epoch-announcing mission of the
prophets of old.
Paul, Peter and John all ended their Earthly testimonies with
an appeal to the Scriptures. Paul concludes his Second Letter to Timothy with
an appeal to Scriptural authority and an exhortation in light of it. Three
times in 2 Peter are appeals made to the authority of Scripture (2 Peter 1.21,
3.2 and 3.16). John concludes the Apocalypse with an exhortation by the Spirit
– a warning to those who would dare to tamper with the words of the prophecy,
an assumption of the integrity of its words and thus its message. Interestingly
the concept of 'adding to' the book is included. Many restrict this to The
Apocalypse (Revelation) itself but it is not unreasonable to argue that John,
conscious of his role and position meant not only the final book of the New
Testament but the whole of the apostolic writings.
Finally, an understanding of this complex of issues
surrounding prophets, prophecy and the nature of the Last Days points to both
the futility of the Charismatic movement's claims and to the foolishness and
misguided futility of Dominion theology and its over-realised eschatology. In
attempting to actualise the Eternal in the present – in some kind of ultimate sense
– their theology decimates the critical Two-Age structure of New Testament
theology and eschatology. They downplay the lingering effects of The Fall, the
vain and groaning nature of this present evil age, the necessity of the Coming of Christ and how this pressing reality
should mark our every thought, action and breath. Ethics are as a
consequence lost and ultimately inverted. Rather than understand that Christ is
Coming to Judge the world and have this reality shape our interaction with
every sphere of life – instead they have embraced the ethos that the Church is
to conquer the world and thus shape and manage every sphere of life. It's a
different message, a different gospel and it relies upon a different
epistemology and set of ethics. It is in the end, a heresy – a different
religion, a caricature of New Testament Christianity and a denial of its
teachings. The New Testament's eschatological worldview is swapped for a
syncretic one.
The New Testament is not a scientific textbook. It is truth
revealed as a story in a plot-line of developed and developing doctrinal
themes. This does not mean we don't take the Scriptures literally but the
literalistic hermeneutics of Dispensationalism and the philosophical approach
of systematic and confessional theology necessarily fails to properly account
for context and the fluidity of thematic structure and typology. Their
quasi-mathematic data-driven approach ends up in a misreading of the Scriptures
– sometimes on a massive or even critical scale.
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**** I don't mean to by cryptic here but I am allowing for
the fact that in the New Testament there were prophetic utterances that
revealed things and yet they were not what we might call epochal or doctrinal
issues – Agabus prophecies concerning Paul being taken to Rome for example.
Now I would argue that the first century was the time of
signs and wonders and was in general associated with the apostolic
establishment of the Church – the signal of Divine activity to mark the advent
of the New Covenant era – which itself describes the Last Days and also
describes the fullness of Heaven and salvation itself.
Revelatory Prophecy and Divinely sanctioned predictive
prophecy seemed to end with the apostles. Now whether the Agabus-type prophecy
regarding individuals is something still possible or the slightly larger idea
that God uses such prophecies or extraordinary means to occasionally guide His
people is something that is still debated. Obviously this strays into the
question of the validity of the modern Charismatic movement which, based on
Redemptive-History and my understanding of just what the New Testament is – I
reject. Yet, I would never want to tie God's hands and absolutely exclude all
possibility of extraordinary communication or revelation on the part of God.
Generally speaking the normative prophecy referred to in the
New Testament refers to exhortation or word-rooted preaching. The
differentiation is important especially when trying to understand Paul's
seeming contradiction in 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 (and 1 Timothy) where on the
one hand women are spoken of as prophesying (as is also the case with Philip's
daughters in Acts) and yet in the same epistle women are told to keep silent
and are forbidden from speaking in the church meeting.
Silence for women is the norm but there were cases of
extraordinary or what we could call charismatic prophecy. This is also why it
was important for the women in that case to be covered – a point Paul revisits
in chapter 11. Prophets are in the Divine Council so to speak – reporting the
words spoken there. They are in the presence of the angels. We all are in that
place as we gather to worship but the prophet is (apparently) present in some
unique way and thus there are proprieties (or protocols) that should be
followed. The reference to angels harks back to the events of Genesis 6 and
thus these prophetesses are not (it would seem) to tempt the angels as they
prophecy – and thus they should cover their heads showing that they are in
submission and not 'available' or making themselves available as it were. Given
that most today reject the New Testament's interpretation of Genesis 6 as an
angelic incursion (despite the fact that there are multiple references to it) the
meaning of 1 Corinthians 11 is largely lost. The passage is usually explained
in terms of the Corinthian cultural context or something along those lines. But
this ignores the fact that Paul gives the reason why prophesying (and what I
would interpret as prophetically praying) women are to be covered – because of
the angels.
Another interesting implication is that if the passage specifically
refers to women prophesying and if we understand that in the post-apostolic
period this practice is no longer functional, it would also follow that women
are no longer required to wear head-coverings apart from the natural covering
they are provided in the femininity represented by their long hair.
Of course if the head covering provision is universal and all
women should be covered at all times in the meeting, Paul's meandering argument
at the beginning of chapter 11 is puzzling. He could have simply resolved the
issue by saying the women ought to be covered at all times because of the
angels. But it's specifically in the context of prophesying that this becomes
an issue.
I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek here but I could say that
today's would-be women preachers (since they are prophesying) ought at the very
least to have their heads covered. But given the feminist assumptions of these
assertive and rebellious women, such a requirement would (in many cases) be
viewed by them as degrading. I suppose their often sheared hair styles would
get them off the hook so to speak – but those hairstyles which they view as a
badge of liberation and modernity are actually (in New Testament anthropological
terms) a source of shame – a kind of abandonment, the sign of a destitute woman
who has no head or authoritative protector. I realise these categories which
are repeatedly touched on in 1 Corinthians 7 and 11 are completely foreign to
today's Western Christian milieu and are generally speaking met with hostility.
Of course on a rather serious note – if what I'm saying is
correct and that they are 'prophesying' in a sense – and indeed the
preaching/revealing natures of prophesying (though I argued for some differentiation)
are not so easily separated – then the spiritual implications for these women
and their congregations is something that's worthy of consideration. We might
ask just what they are opening themselves up to – not to mention the
congregations they presume to lead.
I do not mean to be ambiguous with regard to the question of
prophesying. There is an extraordinary type at work in the apostolic age and
yet those who prophesy even in the normative sense are still (in handling the
Word) revealing the proclamations of the Divine Council as it were. They are
prophets, but of a lower order we might say. This prophetic-Council concept is
still present in the gathering of the Church and the proclamation of the Divine
Word and in the visible Word-tokens we call the Holy Ordinances. And yet there
were still new and active prophesies at work in the apostolic period – part of
the miraculous signs and wonders meant to establish the Divine credentials of
the Church – and under this order – women were sometimes prophetesses. Paul in
1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2-3 was establishing the normative order of
things – which would become the only order in the post-apostolic period.