This is less a book I wanted to write than a book that needed to be written. I’ve waited patiently for someone else to take up the mantle, to put pen to paper and expound on these most controversial of topics, hoping someone would. It’s not because I don’t feel up to the task. My English is passable, I enjoy research, and I’ve been around prophecy and intimately aware of the prophetic since before I could read or write.
In hindsight, my reasoning is selfish: I was cognizant of the
slings and arrows such a deep dive into prophecy, prophets, modern-day carneys,
and everything in between would elicit, and my life has been such that I’ve had
my fair share already, have the scars and bruises to show for it, and if I
could avoid it and let another carry the burden, I would gladly do so.
Full disclosure, cards on the table, I believe in the
prophetic. I believe God still engages with His people, communicates to His
people, warns His people, chastens His people, and operates among His people
supernaturally, as He always has; I believe He speaks to His own, and I believe
He chooses vessels through which He does so.
Believing something, however, is not enough. A multitude of
people believe a multitude of conflicting, contradictory things, and they can’t
all be right, so the mission we will be undertaking during the time we have
together is not to highlight what I personally believe and insist that by the
sheer fact that I believe it, it must be thus, but to ensure that there is
Biblical confirmation to support it. In layman’s terms, if what I believe and
what the Bible says I must believe conflict, then the Bible has final authority
on the matter.
The Bible provides no foundation for the idea that, at some
point in human history, God chose to go radio silent. Ever since Adam and Eve
walked in the garden, God has communicated with His creation, has been fully
engaged, and is not, as some insist, an absentee landlord.
What I do not believe is that God establishes new doctrine
through the prophetic, since the canon of Scripture has been established, and
we have all we need for a full, vibrant, complete, and victorious spiritual
life. This is doubly true when someone claiming to be sent of the Lord speaks
things contrary to what the Word of the Lord has already established, causing
confusion, division, and turmoil within the household of faith.
Prophecy cannot offer you liberties otherwise not
specifically granted in Scripture, nor can it place upon you burdens, whether
practices, rituals, or ceremonies not contained therein.
After considerable deliberation, this study will be divided
into three parts: First, what prophecy is, what it isn’t, its purpose, and its
origins. The second part will focus on prophets, their roles, their authority,
and how they operated in the time before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit
versus how the gift of prophecy operates today. The third part will focus on
the jesters and fools of our day, men and women who go without being sent and
prophesy in the name of a Lord they’ve never known.
The rampant abuse of prophecy today is undeniable. Equally
undeniable is that it is neither accidental nor coincidental. It is one of the
telltale signs of the last days, as obvious and certain as the wars and rumors
of wars, earthquakes in various places, pestilences, and general turning away from
the truth we were warned would be evident. We were warned that such individuals
would rise up and deceive many, but where the false exists, so must true
prophecy; hence the need for discernment and the application of Scriptural
litmus tests in order to separate one from the other.
Anecdotal evidence and personal experience aside, this study
will be tethered to Scripture, for we are bound by the Word in all things. Is
prophecy still relevant? Is it still for today? What does the Bible have to say
about it? These are the questions we will tackle and flesh out Biblically, not
through the prism of a denomination or personal opinion, but via Scripture
itself. Because, in the end, it’s the only opinion that matters.
This study is bound to ruffle some feathers on both sides of
the aisle, whether among continuationists and cessationists, but that can’t be
helped. As long as the Word is our plumb line, we must abide by what it says,
even if it contradicts previously held opinions we believed to be true.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
