The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today

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Behind the pulpit and baptismal pool of the Baptist Church I attended in my youth was a quote from the King James Version of Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision the people perish.” That quote stayed with me, even as my own spiritual journey led me through various denominations and, finally, into the Episcopal Church. In my journey I heard many church leaders talking about the need for vision. From what I could tell that meant, our next best idea. I was shocked, then, to discover that a better translation of that verse might be, “Where there are no prophets, the people cast off restraint.” Is vision our ideas, or God’s? In this paper, that I presented to a discussion group in 1990 hosted by my Bishop, I affirmed that the vision is God’s, and that he reveals it through his prophets. In this paper I briefly discuss the function of prophecy in the New Testament Church, the salient features of the prophetic gift, and the use of the prophetic gift today.