© 29 December 2017 Revive Israel Ministries

We Prophesy in Part

By Asher Intrater

We seek to have a biblical balance on the issues concerning apostolic and prophetic gifts today. One of the keys to find such a balance is the phrase, "we prophesy in part."

I Corinthians 13:9 - We know in part and we prophesy in part.

Love is the greatest commandment. As we continue to love, our love grows more mature. In that experience of maturity, we have more patience and humility. The more we know, the more we realize how much we don't know. We give place to the fact that others will know and see things that we do not. This attitude preserves unity and prevents divisiveness.

The phrase, "we prophesy in part" can be looked at in two ways. For those who do not believe in the continuing gift of prophecy at all, or who say that prophecy must be perfect or else it is totally false, we can see that New Covenant prophecy involves a level of interpretation and understanding that is only partial in nature. We "see through a glass dimly” (I Corinthians 13:12).

Yet we do indeed prophesy. Anyone who is born again and filled with the Holy Spirit can potentially share prophetic revelation (I Corinthians 14:5, 6, 24, 31, 32, 39). Just because prophecy is only partial does not mean that it is not true prophecy. This is why we are instructed to “test” prophecies and “hold on to what is good.” (1 Thess 5:21) If everything prophetic was perfect and complete, there would be no need to “hold on” to what is good and reject what is not.

In the New Covenant, after a person repents and believes in Yeshua, his spirit can be born again. The Spirit of God can bear witness with the human spirit (Romans 8:16) through the human conscience (Romans 9:1). Through the human spirit and conscience, thoughts come to the human mind whose origins are from God (Romans 8:6, Isaiah 55:8-9).

That is the experience of normative New Covenant prophecy: God's thoughts through God's Spirit to our spirit through our conscience, brining God's thoughts into our thoughts. When we convey those "God thoughts" to others, it is considered prophecy or divine wisdom.

On the other hand, those of us who believe in prophecy often need to "tone down" our language. We should not speak in ABSOLUTE terms, because, after all, we only prophesy in part and we only know in part. New Covenant prophecy is not so much a direct and external command from God, but an internal understanding of the will of God through words and pictures, inspired by God in our hearts.

Therefore we should speak with more humble language, posture, tone of voice, volume and "body language." Is the way we prophesy indicating the fact that we know that the very prophecy we are giving is by definition only "partial?"

Here is the balance: "Non-charismatics" need to recognize that New Covenant believers can indeed prophesy, and that the Scriptures nowhere teach that this gift would cease before Yeshua’s return. We "charismatics" need to recognize that what we are prophesying is only partial. And finally, to all of us in any kind of theological argument: whatever it is that we do know, we only know it partially. Let's give some room for humbling ourselves and learning from others.

God wants to work in us and through us through difficult times. How do we embrace our walking with God, even if it has its ups and downs.

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Malek Gavris

Do you feel caught in a place between two forces – on the one hand an indulgent love of the things of this world, and on the other a place of negative standoffishness from all that is going on?

1 John 2:15 says that ‘love of the world’ is sin and cuts us off from the Father’s love, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.” We are from above, the children of God, and the materialistic cravings and desires of this world are not for us.

Yet at the same time the Father loves this world with a costly and sacrificial love, so great that He gave His Son to redeem it: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” - John 3:16. We see that he does not look down from heaven coldly, critically or remotely, which is how we as human beings can be tempted to view things, but lovingly involves himself.

So how can we function in such an impasse, not loving the world and yet embracing it? 

In John 17:15 Yeshua prayed, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” It is only by the Holy Spirit that we can stand at this holy fulcrum - being in the world but not of it. We are to resist the pull of worldly influence and at the same time embrace the people of the world with God’s love and Word - full of grace and truth – that is how Yeshua lived! The battle is won in the place of prayer, before the Father – and that is why he prayed for us in this way in John 17, and so we are to pray in the same way.

Only if we stand at this balance point can we love the sinner and yet hate their sin. Only by God’s grace can we find motivation to enter into the “lost-ness” of people’s broken lives, the prostitute or the terrorist, or even ones from very different ethnic backgrounds, and bring the unconditional love of the Father.