Deuteronomy 18:15 –
Moses continued, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.
This chapter is one where people argue that the Lord promised a prophet for each generation. Many people also say this verse directly points to Jesus’ coming. Now we know that Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and a host of others are written about in the Bible after these writing, so these writings can predict those also. One could argue that this holds true for the Old Testament but what about the time between the end of the OT and Jesus? Was there a prophet and no one recorded their writings? How about after Jesus?
This is where I want to focus a bit is has there been prophets since Jesus? Prophecy is one of those tricky subjects and one must be able to notice a false prophet. Verse 22 gives us guidance on how to recognize a false prophet. Now one could say the prophet Jonah was a false prophet since he predicted the destruction of Nineveh and the Lord showed them mercy. At the same time God was teaching Jonah something, but he did not pass this test so the people could have easily called him a false prophet.
So if it’s difficult to test a prophet in the Bible, how are we to know if there is a prophet among us today? Also, has there been any since Jesus? They had many prophesizing in the name of Jesus, the disciples even complained about ones that were not in the 12 prophesizing. Now this scripture promises prophets, but I did not read for every generation. Also, it’s not clear if there has been any prophets since Jesus. Today we have “fortune tellers” and many people trying to predict the future, especially when it comes to stocks and earthquakes. Science seems to have conquered the weather thing, so now if someone predicts a great storm and is right it’s based on science and not God. Other keep making predictions and once one happens, they claim prophetic powers. All you must do is discern between the Jonah’s and the nut jobs … and that is not easy.