Do prophecy and Scripture fulfill the same function?
Did prophecy go away because Scripture was complete?
This is closely related to “Are the gifts of prophecy and teaching the same”, so please read that post first.
To sum up, that post demonstrates that prophecy and teaching serve different purposes. Prophecy is specific, personal, time-limited, spontaneous revelation; teaching is general, timeless, and rather than spontaneous, is a defined body of doctrine that was preserved and passed on from person to person.
Eventually, this body of doctrine was written down, in the form of the letters which became the New Testament that we have today.
Interestingly, while cessationists sometimes claim that prophecy and teaching are the same, or that prophecy and Scripture are the same, they never claim that the spiritual gift of teaching has ceased, while prophecy has. Why is that? Surely with the entire inspired, inerrant Word of God written down, we no longer need teachers, since we can just read the Bible for ourselves?
So the same arguments made for the cessation of other gifts can be made for cessationists’ preferred gifts as well.
In any case, the same difference between the gifts of prophecy and teaching applies to prophecy and Scripture as well. Prophecy is spontaneous revelation which applies to a specific person or persons and situation. Scripture contains all that every person for all time needs to know about who God is, how to be saved, and how to live.
To state it another way, Scripture is generally and universally applicable (as well as authoritative and inerrant); prophecy is specific and personally applicable (as well as non-authoritative and subject to judgement; please see “Prophecy and Scripture, part 2”). Note that with prophecy I am also including other ways of God speaking, such as dreams, visions, etc.
Why don’t we have (almost) any New Testament prophecies?
Probably the most cogent argument against the idea that Scripture replaced prophecy because they play the same role, is the fact that we have almost no examples of New Testament prophecy preserved (unless you include dreams and visions). One notable exception is the prophecy Agabus made to Paul in Acts 21:10-11, and this was only recorded because it happens to form part of the story of Paul.
If New Testament prophecy was the same as inspired, inerrant, authoritative Scripture, we should have each and every prophecy ever made written down. They should have been circulated through all the churches so everyone could read them. But this didn’t happen.
Cessationists’ main objection to prophecy is that if it is really revelation from God, it violates the truth that the canon of Scripture is final and complete, and the warning at the end of Revelation against adding or taking away anything from “this book” (Revelation 22:18-19). They say if it is a word from God, it would need to be written down and added to the Bible for all people and all time.
For example, a Christian blogger I follow recently wrote this:
This is what charismatic Christians fail to consider: every revelation from God is just as authoritative as the Bible. Every prophecy and every vision or supernatural dream from God is just as innerant, inspired, infallible, and authoritative as the Bible. All revelation from God is equally authoritative, and God cannot contradict himself. (Samuel Sey, “I didn’t marry the woman of my dreams”
This is a massive misunderstanding of the nature of prophetic revelation. A personal word from God for a particular believer or church is not the same as the universal, authoritative revelation in Scripture.
Again, look at the example of Agabus’ prophecy. He predicted that Paul would be bound by the Jews and delivered to the Gentiles. This is recorded because it forms part of Paul’s story, but it contains no doctrine about God that the church of all time would suffer without, and no commands that the church of all time needs to obey (or even that Paul needed to obey). It applied only to Paul, and only for a specific time.
Many ordinary NT believers prophesied, but only a few wrote Scripture
All indications are that prophecy was a widespread and regular practice in the early church. At Pentecost, the apostle Peter explains that it is a fulfillment of a prophecy by Joel:1
But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:
“‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. (Acts 2:16-18)
Paul encouraged the gift of prophecy for everyone:
[E]arnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy….Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. (1 Corinthians 14:1,5)
For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged. (1 Corinthians 14:31)
By contrast, only a few apostles and church leaders wrote the letters and books that ended up becoming part of the biblical canon.
Scripture itself doesn’t tell us that it replaces prophecy
I bang this drum again and again, but if Scripture is our totally authoritative, inspired source of doctrine for the church of all ages, and it was meant to replace prophecy, why does it not tell us that itself? Instead, it tells us there is a gift of prophecy, tells us to “earnestly desire” it (1 Corinthians 14:1,39), and not to despise prophecies (1 Thessalonians 5:20).
Conclusion
There is no evidence that Scripture and prophecy play the same roles, and none that Scripture was intended to replace prophecy. All the evidence from the New Testament points to the fact that prophecy was intended to be a gift of the Holy Spirit to the church, until the day we see Jesus “face to face” and “know fully” (1 Corinthians 13).
Related: See “Prophecy and Scripture, Part 2” for a continuation of this topic.
See also Moses’ statement in Numbers 11:29: But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!”