(b) The earthly ministry of Christ incarnate.—In his earthly ministry, Christ showed himself the prophet par excellence. While he submitted, [pg 712] like the Old Testament prophets, to the direction of the Holy Spirit, unlike them, he found the sources of all knowledge and power within himself. The word of God did not come to him,—he was himself the Word.
Luke 6:19—“And all the multitude sought to touch him; for power came forth from him, and healed them all”; John 2:11—“This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory”; 8:38, 58—“I speak the things which I have seen with my Father.... Before Abraham was born, I am”; cf. Jer. 2:1—“the word of Jehovah came to me”; John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.” Mat. 26:53—“twelve legions of angels”; John 10:18—of his life: “I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again”; 34—“Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came ... say ye of him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God?” Martensen, Dogmatics, 295-301, says of Jesus' teaching that “its source was not inspiration, but incarnation.” Jesus was not inspired,—he was the Inspirer. Therefore he is the true “Master of those who know.” His disciples act in his name; he acts in his own name.
(c) The guidance and teaching of his church on earth, since his ascension.—Christ's prophetic activity is continued through the preaching of his apostles and ministers, and by the enlightening influences of his Holy Spirit (John 16:12-14; Acts 1:1). The apostles unfolded the germs of doctrine put into their hands by Christ. The church is, in a derivative sense, a prophetic institution, established to teach the world by its preaching and its ordinances. But Christians are prophets, only as being proclaimers of Christ's teaching (Num. 11:29; Joel 2:28).
John 16:12-14—“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth.... He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine and shall declare it unto you”; Acts 1:1—“The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach”—Christ's prophetic work was only begun, during his earthly ministry; it is continued since his ascension. The inspiration of the apostles, the illumination of all preachers and Christians to understand and to unfold the meaning of the word they wrote, the conviction of sinners, and the sanctification of believers,—all these are parts of Christ's prophetic work, performed through the Holy Spirit.
By virtue of their union with Christ and participation in Christ's Spirit, all Christians are made in a secondary sense prophets, as well as priests and kings. Num. 11:29—“Would that all Jehovah's people were prophets, that Jehovah would put his Spirit upon them”; Joel 2:28—“I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” All modern prophecy that is true, however, is but the republication of Christ's message—the proclamation and expounding of truth already revealed in Scripture. “All so-called new prophecy, from Montanus to Swedenborg, proves its own falsity by its lack of attesting miracles.”
A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 242—“Every human prophet presupposes an infinite eternal divine Prophet from whom his knowledge is received, just as every stream presupposes a fountain from which it flows.... As the telescope of highest power takes into its field the narrowest segment of the sky, so Christ the prophet sometimes gives the intensest insight into the glowing centre of the heavenly world to those whom this world regards as unlearned and foolish, and the church recognizes as only babes in Christ.”
(d) Christ's final revelation of the Father to his saints in glory (John 16:25; 17:24, 26; cf. Is. 64:4; 1 Cor. 13:12).—Thus Christ's prophetic work will be an endless one, as the Father whom he reveals is infinite.
John 16:25—“the hour cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in dark sayings, but shall tell you plainly of the Father”; 17:24—“I desire that where I am, they also may be with me; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me”; 26—“I made known unto them thy name, and will make it known.” The revelation of his own glory will be the revelation of the Father, in the Son. Is. 64:4—“For from of old men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen a God besides thee, who worketh for him that waiteth for him”; 1 Cor. 13:12—“now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known.” Rev. 21:23—“And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb”—not light, but lamp. Light is something generally diffused; one sees by it, but one cannot see it. [pg 713]Lamp is the narrowing down, the concentrating, the focusing of light, so that the light becomes definite and visible. So in heaven Christ will be the visible God. We shall never see the Father separate from Christ. No man or angel has at any time seen God, “whom no man hath seen, nor can see.” “The only begotten Son ... he hath declared him,” and he will forever declare him (John 1:18; 1 Tim. 6:16).
The ministers of the gospel in modern times, so far as they are joined to Christ and possessed by his spirit, have a right to call themselves prophets. The prophet is one—1. sent by God and conscious of his mission; 2. with a message from God which he is under compulsion to deliver; 3. a message grounded in the truth of the past, setting it in new lights for the present, and making new applications of it for the future. The word of the Lord must come to him; it must be his gospel; there must be things new as well as old. All mathematics are in the simplest axiom; but it needs divine illumination to discover them. All truth was in Jesus' words, nay, in the first prophecy uttered after the Fall, but only the apostles brought it out. The prophet's message must be 4. a message for the place and time—primarily for contemporaries and present needs; 5. a message of eternal significance and worldwide influence. As the prophet's word was for the whole world, so our word may be for other worlds, that “unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God”(Eph. 3:10). It must be also 6. a message of the kingdom and triumph of Christ, which puts over against the distractions and calamities of the present time the glowing ideal and the perfect consummation to which God is leading his people: “Blessed be the glory of Jehovah from his place”; “Jehovah is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him” (Ez. 3:12; Hab. 2:20). On the whole subject of Christ's prophetic office, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:24-27; Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 320-330; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:366-370.