Before the session

Read this through. Read Acts 2:14-21 once at home, slowly. Read 1 Corinthians 14:1-3 once. Bring honest questions.

This is what was spoken

To understand the New Testament's expectation of believers, we have to start at Pentecost. Acts 2 is the hinge.

The room is full. The Spirit has just been poured out. The disciples are speaking in languages they did not know. The crowd is amazed and confused. Some of them mock. "They are filled with new wine."

And Peter stands up.

"Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: 'And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.'" (Acts 2:14-18)

Read that slowly.

This is what was spoken. Peter takes the prophecy of Joel 2 and tells the crowd that it is being fulfilled, now, in the room. This is the moment. Joel was talking about this.

Two phrases in Peter's quotation are doing important work and worth pausing on.

In the last days

The phrase in the last days is one of the most important phrases in the New Testament for our question.

In modern popular Christianity, the last days often gets read as a few years just before Jesus returns. The seven-year tribulation. End-times charts. Books about the rapture. The phrase has been narrowed in recent decades to almost a calendar window.

But that is not how Peter or the writer to the Hebrews uses the phrase. For them, the last days is the entire age between the ascension of Jesus and His return. It is the church age. It is now.

The writer to the Hebrews opens his book with this conviction:

"Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son." (Hebrews 1:1-2)

In these last days means the era we are living in. The era inaugurated by Jesus. The era of the Spirit poured out. The era of the church. Two thousand years and counting. The Spirit's outpouring, in Peter's framework, is not a one-day event in the upper room. It is the defining feature of the entire age that opens at Pentecost.

This matters because it tells us how Peter expected the Joel prophecy to function. Not as a fireworks display that flared once and went out. As a defining feature of an era.

Sons and daughters prophesying. Old men dreaming dreams. Young men seeing visions. Servants speaking by the Spirit. Peter expected this kind of thing to characterise the church for as long as the church was on earth.

That is the New Testament's first significant claim about today. The age of the Spirit's outpouring did not end with the apostles. It opens at Pentecost and continues until Christ returns.

What Paul actually told the Corinthians

If Acts 2 sets the era, the letters to the Corinthians show us what the era looked like in practice.

Paul writes to a church in a major Greek city that is doing many things badly. They are arguing. They are showing off. They are misusing the gifts of the Spirit. The whole letter is a series of corrections. By the time he gets to chapters 12, 13, and 14, he is dealing with their disorder around prophecy and tongues.

What is striking is what he does not tell them. He does not tell them to stop. He does not tell them prophecy is over. He does not tell them tongues are not for today. He tells them how to do it properly, in love, in order, for the building up of the church.

In fact, he says this:

"Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy." (1 Corinthians 14:1)

Read it again. Earnestly desire. The verb is strong. It is the same word used elsewhere for craving, longing, eagerly seeking. Paul tells the Corinthians to want prophecy. To go after it. Not to tolerate it if it appears. To pursue it.

And he gives a definition, in the next verses, of what this gift is for:

"The one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation." (1 Corinthians 14:3)

Three words. Upbuilding. Encouragement. Consolation. The New Testament's definition of prophecy is not predictive certainty about the future. It is not new doctrine. It is not infallible utterance. It is upbuilding, encouragement, and consolation spoken by one believer to another, sourced, somehow, in the Spirit's prompting.

That is much smaller than the popular caricature of prophecy. And it is much more useful.

What Paul told the Thessalonians

The same Paul, writing to a different church, says this:

"Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil." (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22)

Five short instructions, all in a row, all on the same theme.

Do not quench the Spirit. Not all believers, says Paul, sin by being too open. Some sin by being too closed. There is such a thing as quenching the Spirit, and Paul warns against it.

Do not despise prophecies. Some Thessalonians, evidently, were already inclined to dismiss what others said the Spirit had given them. Paul tells them not to.

Test everything. But he is no naive enthusiast. Test it. The early church was never instructed to receive every claim of "the Lord told me" without examination. They were instructed to test.

Hold fast what is good. Whatever survives the test, keep. Whatever does not, let go.

Abstain from every form of evil. The whole exercise is anchored in moral seriousness.

What does this passage tell us about the New Testament church's experience of God's voice? It tells us that prophecy was a normal enough part of their life that some people were despising it and Paul had to correct them. It tells us testing was assumed. It tells us the goal was not free-for-all enthusiasm and not cessation, but attentive discernment.

That is a long way from how most modern conservative churches handle the question.

What both sides of the debate must agree on

If we are reading the New Testament honestly, both sides have to agree on at least the following.

The Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost in a way that fulfilled Joel 2.
Paul expected the Corinthian church to prophesy. He told them to pursue it.
The early church practised testing, not silencing. Paul instructed the Thessalonians to not despise prophecies.
The New Testament's definition of prophecy is upbuilding, encouragement, and consolation. Not new doctrine. Not infallible prediction.

The disagreement is not about any of this. The disagreement is about what happened after the apostles died. Did the gifts of the Spirit gradually withdraw as the canon was completed? Or did they continue, in a more ordinary, distributed form, throughout the church age that Peter said had begun?

That is the question of week four.

What we are doing this week

Tonight we are not arguing for or against cessationism. We are simply letting the New Testament tell us what its writers expected of the believers they were writing to. They expected prophecy. They expected testing. They expected the Spirit to be at work in ways that needed both encouragement and correction.

Whatever we eventually conclude about how that translates to today, we have to start from this honest reading of the text. The early church was not a Bible study with a closed door. It was a community in which the Spirit was actively speaking, often badly handled, frequently corrected, but never told to stop.

Hold this in your hand. We will weigh it more carefully next week.

Before you come to the session

Bring two things to the group.

One sentence on what surprised you in Acts 2 or 1 Corinthians 14:1-3 as you read this week.
One question that came up about how this might apply, or might not apply, to today.

Pentecost and After