Hi, I was reading your blog and noticed something that was plain weird, you said,
"So if you hear a prophet preaching something unbiblical, it doesn't necessarily mean that he's a false prophet, it just means that he's not a teacher, and whoever let him teach is the one who made the mistake."
But that is not according to the Bible in Deut. 18:20
But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.' 21 "You may say in your heart, `How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?' 22 "When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.
I have never read in the Bible that a prophet needs a teacher in order to give a prophecy, the prophet is supposed to be the messenger of God that is why he or she is sensible to His voice. And if the prophecy doesn't occur then we are not to fear him. The answer that was given to you is completely absurd.
Blessings, may the His Word always be the one that lightens your path.

Hi alyssa,

Thanks for your comment. There are a bunch of issues here that I can't go into in a comment. I'm thinking about posting more on prophecy in the future. Maybe I'll address some of the other issues there.

Here's the main thing though. I wasn't talking about a prophet who gives a prophecy that doesn't come true. The question of whether New Testament prophets can get things wrong is one of the things I can't get into without writing a whole article on it.

What I was talking about is a prophet who teaches something that is doctrinally off. The assumption that a lot of people have is that because somebody has messed up doctrine, that means that they're a false prophet. Not necessarily!

To give a very common scenario, let's say I go to a conference where a well-known prophet is speaking. He has several words of knowledge while he's speaking and accurately gives names and details about people that he's never met. He gives several prophecies which are obviously very meaningful to people in their private situations, etc. Obviously, there's something supernatural going on. Then he gets up to preach the sermon and preaches a total health-and-wealth-Gospel message. ("God wants you to be rich; you were all made to be millionaires; if you're sick in your body it's because you lack faith," etc.)

Now, in this hypothetical situation, I have an issue. The prophet clearly did something supernatural at the beginning of the service, and then he went on to preach something that is absolutely false and unbiblical. Many Christians assume that I have only two options here. I either have to accept the teaching because it was accompanied by a prophetic gift - surely the "man of God" would be teaching the truth, right? Or on the basis of the false teaching, I have to attribute the man and his supernatural operation to another source - he cannot be of God, it must be the devil.

What I'm saying, and what I learned when I was at IHOP the first time, is that those are not the only two options. 1 Corinthians 12 gives a great understanding of what the spiritual gifts are for and how they are meant to be used in the Body of Christ. The whole chapter is relevant, but here are a few key verses:

1 Corinthians 12:27-29
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually. 28 And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles?

The answer to the hypothetical situation that I described is that that prophetic person should never have been allowed to teach. He was trying to do something that wasn't his gifting, and as a result he got it wrong. He didn't have enough structured understanding and disciplined study of the word to realize how wrong he was - most likely he had based his theology on his experiences and some books he read. But that doesn't mean that he was a false prophet. He could have a very legitimate prophetic gift that could be used to edify the Body of Christ if used in the right way with the right team. But he cannot be a lone ranger - none of us can!

Hope that helps clarify the issue. Like I said, the question about a prophet giving a prophecy that doesn't come true is a separate issue. I do have some thoughts about that, maybe I'll post them at some point.

Hi, I just noticed your blog and thought I ought to mention something about everyone being able to understand the Bible. I agree with you and those at IHOP on one level. God intended the Bible to be understood and there is a tremendous amount we can understand. However, I can guarantee you that there is a significant portion of the Bible that the average reader is not going to understand without a lot of help. Your example from Revelations, for instance, is a case and point. Revelation is absolutely loaded with imagery and concepts from the 1st century that we are definitely going to misinterpret if we take them at literal face value. We as Christians need to learn how to read the Bible for what it is saying. I have a lot of respect for IHOP but Biblical Studies is an area of tremendous weakness and I hope that my brothers and sisters are willing to change their tune in this area of their theology.

Hi David,

Thanks for your comment. I do appreciate Biblical studies and historical research. It is extremely helpful to have some context for what people in the First Century (and before) thought and believed, etc.

The question is not whether that information is helpful, but whether that information is crucial to a correct understanding. I maintain that it is helpful, but not crucial - a "plain reading" approach to the Bible - including the book of Revelation - will yield understandings that will not be nuanced and may be erroneous in small details, but they need not be completely off base.

I note that your "guarantee" changes from the beginning to the end of your comment. You begin by saying that you guarantee that the average reader "will not be able to understand" things in the Bible, especially in the book of Revelation. But then you go on to say that they will "misinterpret" what the read. In other words, the problem is not that they cannot understand what they read, but rather that the understandings that they will reach differ from yours (or perhaps those that you were taught in Bible college or Seminary).

I would love for you to enlighten me on the "imagery and concepts from the first century" that have broad scholarly consensus to interpret what (for example) "7 angels with 7 trumpets" really are.

However, after having heard statements like yours repeatedly for several years but never hearing any actual content behind them, I suspect that this is merely a smokescreen. No one knows what the "imagery and concepts from the first century" that would supposedly unlock the book of Revelation actually are. Various scholars have various theories, and they rarely agree.

Furthermore, the idea that the only way to correctly interpret the book of Revelation is by clumping it in with non-canonical works of religious fiction that also happen to include angels and end-of-the-world events seems to me to be highly suspect. Do we actually believe in the inerrancy of Scripture or not? If we actually believe that the Holy Spirit supervised the writing of the book of Revelation in such a way that it is "free from all falsehood, fraud, and deceit," then when the writer of Revelation says, "I saw an angel and he told me..." then it actually happened just like that. The question then, is not "what was the writer of this book trying to communicate to the readers in cryptic imagery?" but rather "what was Jesus communicating to His Church by giving visionary experiences to His prophet?"

I maintain, in agreement with the leadership of IHOP-KC, that the only reliable way to "hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches" in the book of Revelation is to approach it with the assumption that it is literal, except where it says it is symbolic, that it is describing future events, and that it is intelligible without having a PhD.

The problem with the IHOP assumption that Revelations is generally literal unless clearly otherwise intended is that the entire genre of the book demands something other than a literal reading. Indeed, a hermeneutic which assumes literal interpretation unless there is a demand for another reading is a good one for the whole of the Bible but it probably was not how the author of Revelations intended us to read it or understand it. Revelation is not James or Matthew; it intends something much different for the reader and the church. My “smoke-screen” claim that this book has far more going than what we read literally is not one to hide some alternative intention; it is one of humility in approaching this text. In my assessment, what would be presumptuous would to be claim that we can understand something written in the past, even if intended for readers even today, without respecting the context from which it arose, which is what I am insisting we do when we read Revelations.

Being suspicious of non-canonical writings as tools to interpret the Bible is like being suspicious of Martin Luther King when interpreting Barrack Obama’s Inaugural Address. In fact, if you weren’t familiar with MLK you would not correctly interpret Obama’s speech. It is because the author of Revelations was a first century Jew writing to the first century church that they could interact with the thoughts, stories, and ideas of that time. It certainly still allows for the inspiration of the scriptures, of which I whole heartedly believe. Revelations isn’t the only place Biblical authors do this, which you probably already know. If you’re not familiar, take a look at the creation accounts in Genesis and study the Enuma Elish. There is no literal reason in the text we should bring this non-canonical writing into our interpretation of Genesis, however, Genesis is very clearly interacting with the ideas from this text.

Whether or not scholars disagree on specifics of revelations, like the passage you are talking about, is really not pertinent to this conversation and I agree with you, just because someone has a different interpretation from IHOP’s doesn’t delegitimate IHOP’s. However, what is important generally about Revelations is that legitimate scholars are very much in agreement that there is a tremendous amount more going on that what we read literally in Revelations. Just because we have not unlocked the text with information from the 1st century doesn’t mean that we should therefore read the text literally.

I think my problem with IHOP’s interpretation is that I don’t feel the leaders there have the credentials to make the interpretive claims they do with their lack of work in Biblical scholarship. I think we at least ought to respect the Bible enough to read it in its original language, and frankly, I have listened to a fair amount of interpretation from IHOP’s leaders, even studied IHOP’s interpretation of certain key passages in the movement, and I cannot remember even once hearing any real critical evaluation of Greek text in these passages. Teaching on these passages is primarily placed on prophetic exposition and how it fits in with key prophecies from the beginning of the movement.

I think that this stance about the literality of Revelations by IHOP’s leadership has more to do with presuppositions about other elements of IHOP’s theology which become difficult to deal with if we limit ourselves in our abilities to understand the end times in the book of Revelations. This is evident in how you assume the book of Revelations is supposed to be “unlocked” by these concepts from the first century that no-one has shown you. Who said that Revelations was supposed to be “unlocked” in the first place and in what sense?

While I cannot deal with these images and concepts from the 1st century myself, having no access to scholarly commentaries because I live overseas and not being sure I would get the information correct, I suggest you open them up for yourself and have a look. Make sure you get a commentary that both deals with extra-biblical sources and the Greek. Try something like a Word Biblical Commentary, Pillar New Testament, or The New International Greek Commentary. You could also get a hold of a seminary and contact a professor with whom you could discuss this issue. In any case, I hope you will take my suggestion seriously and I would be happy to hear your thoughts on my reply.

David,

I wrote a response about 2 weeks ago, but then thought better of it. I don't think either of us is likely to change the other's mind on this point, so I'll refrain from debate. Winning (or losing) an argument on this little back alley of the Internet isn't likely to be productive for either of us in loving Jesus more.

You have inspired me to read the Pseudepigrapha for myself and see whether there is any validity to the claim that the book of Revelation depends on them either by reference or genre.

With that said, I will give a few clarifications and relevant quotes and leave it at that.

First, I was talking about the inerrancy of Scripture, not the inspiration of Scripture. IHOP-KC subscribes to the Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy and Biblical Hermeneutics.

One article of the latter is especially relevant to this conversation:

Article XIII

WE AFFIRM  that awareness of the literary categories, formal and stylistic, of the various parts of Scripture is essential for proper exegesis, and hence we value genre criticism as one of the many disciplines of biblical study.
WE DENY  that generic categories which negate historicity may rightly be imposed on biblical narratives which present themselves as factual.
...
The Denial is directed at an illegitimate use of genre criticism by some who deny the truth of passages which are presented as factual. Some, for instance, take Adam to be a myth, whereas in Scripture he is presented as a real person. Others take Jonah to be an allegory when he is presented as a historical person and so referred to by Christ (Mat. 12:40-42). This Denial is an appropriate and timely warning not to use genre criticism as a cloak for rejecting the truth of Scripture.

Revelation presents itself as factual. John says, "I saw this" and "these things will take place." (Rev 1:1-2)

Secondly, regarding "humility before the text," Wayne Grudem said it better than I could:

In a day when it is common for people to tell us how hard it is to interpret Scripture rightly, we would do well to remember that not once in the Gospels do we ever hear Jesus saying anything like this: “I see how your problem arose—the Scriptures are not very clear on that subject.” Instead, whether he is speaking to scholars or untrained common people, his responses always assume that the blame for misunderstanding any teaching of Scripture is not to be placed on the Scriptures themselves, but on those who misunderstand or fail to accept what is written. (Grudem, Systematic Theology, 106)

And finally, I'm not sure what you mean that "legitimate scholars" are in agreement that Revelation cannot be read literally. Mike Bickle is certainly not a technical Bible scholar, nor does he claim to be, but he's hardly the only person who takes a literalist-futurist position on the book of Revelation. Wikipedia has a helpful (though incomplete) list.

Jeff,

Sorry I have not replied earlier. I forgot about this conversation and just remembered it tonight.

Thanks for your replied. I understand you a lot better now and I think you have clarified yourself. The two quotes form the Chicago Statement were especially helpful and I can affirm them.

However, I want to make a couple of notes and you can respond if you like. Firstly, I think the issue of genre is a little more complex than the second quote from the statement seems to allude. It seems to me that often times even with the best evidence we are not sure what is being presented as factual and in what sense. Genesis is clearly presenting facts but in what sense? Are they theological facts or historical facts? And know that I do think there is a tremendous number of facts that are presented historically in the Bible, in fact most of it.

Finally, consider the compounding factors when you think about John's presentation of facts in Revelations. John is writing and ordering the facts in an intentional way (1), about the future (2), that he has seen in a vision (3), to an audience of his contemporary day (4). While 1 and 4 are pretty common, we need to at least consider how 2 and 3 might change the presentation of facts.

If you don't reply back, I hope that we can both grow from this conversation.

Grace and peace.