Listen carefully to authentic prophecies

Church leaders, listen carefully to authentic prophecies.

The reason that God has provided prophets is so that His will can be heard, understood, and obeyed. The major source of the revelation of God is the bible, and no authentic prophecy could ever contradict the scriptures. But there are many things that God wants to tell us today that cannot be found in the Bible. Biblical revelation is known by the Greek word logos, while contemporary revelation through prophecy is known as rhema. Because they are both the word of God, we must not neglect either one.

I use the adjective "authentic" to modify prophecy because, unfortunately, there are many spurious prophecies going around. In fact, because of some bad experiances with unauthentic prophecy, some have gone overboard and rejected the ministry of prophecy in general. They shouldn't do this any more than they should reject pastoral ministry because of some bad pastors or teaching ministry because of some bad teachers, both of which are common enough. Seemingly in anticipation of this, Paul writes, "Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good" (1 Thes. 5:19-21). In other words, one of the ways of quenching the Spirit is to reject prophecy, and we don't want to do that.

Taken from: "Seven Power Principles That I Didn't Learn in Seminary" by C. Peter Wagner