Notes on Prophecy.

On nearly every spiritual gifts inventory I’ve ever taken, prophecy emerges as my strongest area of gifting. I use the language of area of gifting intentionally. I believe that each follower of Jesus is indwelt by the Spirit upon salvation and given a gift—singular (akin each of us having a single personality)—for the building up of the church. Paul tells Timothy to stir up the gift he had received, not a portfolio of gifts. Whatever else prophecy may be, it is something entrusted, cultivated, and exercised in service to others.

For much of my life, my understanding of prophecy was shaped by the assumption that prophecy is primarily about foretelling—God speaking about future events. After all, the Old Testament is filled with examples of this: judgment mediated through pagan nations, detailed promises concerning the Messiah, warnings of exile, and visions of restoration yet to come. Prophecy, it seemed, was fundamentally about what would happen in the future.

That assumption carried into my early attempts to understand prophecy as a New Testament gift. And like many people raised in an evangelical context that valued supernatural experience, my understanding was bent in an overly emotional and hyper-spiritual direction. Prophecy, in my mind, was tied closely to prosperity-gospel instincts and closely related to name-it-and-claim-it practices. Even when I could articulate the right theological caveats, my instincts leaned toward spectacle—God interrupting ordinary human thought with extraordinary speech.

As my theology matured, that sentimental view gradually gave way to something more restrained. I came to understand New Testament prophecy less as foretelling and more as forth-telling—speaking boldly and forthrightly about difficult realities. This fit better with my growing commitment to careful biblical interpretation and doctrinal clarity. Yet somewhere along the way, I began to suspect that I might have overcorrected. In pushing back against excess, I had drifted toward a faith that was increasingly intellectual, orderly, and suspicious of mystery. I still considered myself a charismatic, at least in the technical sense. I do not believe the so-called sign gifts have ceased. But I also do not see them operating in the same way—or serving the same cultural function—as they did in the first century.

A story from a missionary friend helped clarify this for me. He works in a difficult field and recently traveled to a village not far from his primary location, though worlds away in a practical sense. The people technically spoke the same language, but the dialect was so distinct that he could not understand a single word. He realized this almost immediately. And just as quickly, he found himself able to speak in a way that the villagers clearly understood. He shared the good news of Jesus, and they understood him without confusion.

This is how I understand tongues—not as something that introduces chaos, but as something that produces clarity for the sake of the gospel. Not as spectacle, but as alignment. Not confusion, but communication.

I’ve come to see prophecy in much the same way.

One of the things Scripture makes clear—though we often overlook it—is that God’s eternal purposes are most often accomplished through earthly means. God is free to act however He chooses, and there are moments when He clearly steps outside the normal economy He has established. But those moments are exceptions, not the rule.

Consider prayer. In the garden, Adam and Eve enjoyed direct communion with God. After their rebellion, that access changed. Sin introduced a new economy. Scripture teaches that, post-fall, God does not hear those who harbor iniquity in their hearts. Access to His presence requires mediation. A priest enters on behalf of the people. And yet, even within this economy, we find Cain, an unrighteous man, speaking directly with God. God is not bound by the structures He establishes. Still, He ordinarily works in and through them.

This pattern repeats throughout Scripture. God’s power is not diminished because He chooses to work through human weakness. In fact, this seems to be His preferred method. Eternity presses into time not by bypassing creation, but by inhabiting it.

There is another assumption worth questioning. In the Old Testament, the Spirit indwelt only specific individuals, and at times for limited periods. Further, God’s people possessed less than the full revelation of His will. And yet, we see extraordinary demonstrations of divine power. Why, then, in an age marked by the indwelling presence of the Spirit and the completed canon of Scripture, do we so easily assume that God’s power would now be expressed in a way that seems lesser rather than greater?

Let’s make no mistake, this power should not be measured by spectacle, but by faithfulness. The supernatural work of God is not always loud or immediately visible. It is often expressed through sustained obedience, patient endurance, and wisdom shaped over time. Whatever the expression, we can trust that God’s power is at work in ways we do not always recognize or comprehend, accomplishing eternal purposes through ordinary means.

This helps us understand biblical prophecy in a way that may offend both charismatic and conservative sensibilities.

During Jesus’s passion week, two prophecies are spoken that rarely receive the attention they deserve. After Jesus’s arrest, the Jewish leaders pressured Pilate to authorize His execution. They demanded that the charge placed above His head specify that He claimed to be the King of the Jews. Pilate refused. “What I have written, I have written.” King of the Jews. Spoken by a Roman governor with no interest in Israel’s Messiah, and yet truer than Pilate could have known.

Earlier, as the Sanhedrin debated how to deal with Jesus, Caiaphas, the high priest, made a chillingly pragmatic statement: it is better for one man to die than for the whole nation to perish. John tells us explicitly that Caiaphas spoke this as prophecy. And yet Caiaphas was no faithful servant of God. He was not indwelt by the Spirit. He was speaking politically, strategically, even cynically. And somehow, through his natural reasoning, eternal truth was spoken.

These moments disrupt our categories. Prophecy spoken by unbelievers. Prophecy spoken without awareness. Prophecy arising not from ecstatic revelation, but from ordinary human calculation. God accomplishing His purposes through speech that appears wholly natural.

This has forced me to reconsider the Old Testament prophets themselves. I have often imagined them as passive instruments—God supernaturally placing words into their mouths with little regard for their own thought processes. But Scripture presents a more textured picture. The prophets were people of deep conviction, intense moral clarity, and unwaveringly sustained attention to God. Their minds were shaped by devotion, and their imaginations formed by covenantal faithfulness. It is possible that in many moments they spoke simply from conviction, unaware that their words would one day be canonized. And yet, when the Spirit moved, their speech aligned perfectly with God’s purposes.

This does not diminish inspiration. It clarifies it. The Spirit works through the prophet’s wisdom, observation, convictions, and language—not in spite of them.

This may even help us understand foretelling in a new light. Wisdom, in Scripture, is not mere intelligence elevated by experience. It is perception aligned with reality as defined by God. A prophet, filled with the Spirit of wisdom, could observe patterns of idolatry, injustice, and covenant unfaithfulness and discern where those paths inevitably lead. If you continue to do this, then that will surely follow. Given the geopolitical realities of the ancient world, such discernment was not guesswork. It was truth-telling rooted in real wisdom.

Some foretelling may arise in precisely this way: Spirit-formed wisdom applied to real conditions.

This brings us back to prophecy today. A hyper-spiritual view expects prophecy to arrive as interruption—God overriding the human mind with supernatural speech. But Scripture suggests something more subtle and, perhaps, more demanding.

Prophecy may be God speaking supernaturally in a way that appears wholly natural.

The Spirit forms the believer through worship, prayer, Scripture, and renewal of the mind. And from that formation comes speech that aligns with God’s truth—sometimes confrontational, sometimes clarifying, sometimes warning, sometimes hopeful.

Modern prophecy, then, is possible. It is sober. It is non-chaotic. It is accountable. It does not add to Scripture, but it applies Scripture with courage. It does not seek spectacle, but faithfulness. And it operates within God’s economy—eternal purposes accomplished through earthly means—even as it remains subject to His freedom.

Perhaps prophecy offends us not because it is too supernatural, but because it looks too ordinary.