Are there still prophets today, and if so, do true prophets have to be correct?

Q. I just read an article on Politico.com about contemporary prophets who are predicting that Donald Trump will become president again by the spring of this year, 2021, several years before he could actually be re-elected. 1. I know that Paul speaks of prophecy as a gift, but I don’t understand the need for prophets since the death of Christ. Wasn’t “the Word made flesh” so that we don’t need prophets? Didn’t God reveal all that we need to know? 2. I know that Old Testament prophets sometimes made prophetic statements about rulers but I thought that, for the most part, their prophecies focused on God’s people and their relationship with Him. It seems somewhat ungodly to think that God would be prophetically involved in micro-politics in our country. 3. Are there any instances in the OT of prophets being incorrect? If not, is it possible that Scripture only records their hits and omits their strikeouts? If not, then should we conclude that any modern-day prophet who strikes out is not really a prophet? If so, is there any modern-day prophet who is batting 1.000? (Or, to continue the metaphor, do you get a couple of swings and misses – and maybe foul balls – but aren’t out until you reach a certain number of misses?)

Let me respond to your first, third, and second questions in that order.

As for your first question, I personally believe that the gift of prophecy remains active in the church today. I do not believe that any prophecies since the New Testament was completed have added anything to the revelation in Scripture, but I do believe that God still speaks through spiritually gifted and sensitive people to bring inspired messages to groups of believers that need guidance, challenge, and encouragement. So in one sense, yes, through the incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus, and the completion of the written word of God in the Scriptures, God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. In another sense, there is still a need for groups of believers to hear what God is saying to them about specific situations they are facing, and it is the ongoing role of prophets to speak that word.

But this immediately raises the question of how we can know whether such contemporary prophets are truly speaking from God, instead of from themselves, likely under various influences. This relates to your third question. Wouldn’t a genuine prophet get things right, at least a credible amount of the time? And prophets generally hold themselves to this standard. The article you cited quoted one person who had predicted that Donald Trump would win the 2020 presidential election as saying, on the day that Joe Biden was declared the winner, “I take full responsibility for being wrong. There was no excuse for it. I think it doesn’t make me a false prophet, but it does actually create a credibility gap.” Others quoted in the article go further. One self-described prophet said, of those who are still insisting in February 2021 that Trump will soon return as president, “This has opened the door to outright delusion. … I’ll say we’ve earned the world’s mockery for our foolishness.” So yes, we should expect that any genuine prophet would have a strong track record for accuracy and truth. The Bible itself specifies this same standard: “If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously.” I think we could still have much respect, however, for a prophet who got something wrong but then admitted that promptly and humbly.

Finally, to respond to your second question, I would say that the prophecies that are recorded in the Scriptures, if we may take them as a model, give just as much attention to social and political concerns as to God’s people and their relationship with Him. Prophecy is both “fore-telling” and “forth-telling.” That is, it not only announces what God is going to do, it also speaks truth to power. Some biblical scholars have estimated that there is actually much more forth-telling than fore-telling within biblical prophecy. But there needs to be a standard for that as well. If prophets are to address current social and political realities, as well as situations within the believing community, then they must do so in keeping with the principles that God reveals in the Scriptures. The truth that is spoken to power must be God’s truth. And this was perhaps an even greater concern in the article you cited than the issue of incorrect prophecies that Trump would be re-elected. The article quotes a theologian and pastor who monitors present-day self-described prophets as saying that in return for favorable prophecies about him, “They had direct access to him and ability to influence decisions Trump was making. The real story was in the power, influence and access.” The article quotes others who see the positive prophecies as having been an “attempt to curry favor with a powerful political figure and movement.” If that is actually the case, then they would not have been speaking truth to power. They would have been telling power what it wanted to hear.

If Jesus died on a Friday and rose on a Sunday, how was that the “third day”?

Q. Jesus said, referring to himself, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” But Jesus died on a Friday and rose on a Sunday. How was that the “third day”?

The answer has to do with how people in the biblical culture reckoned time. Today was considered the first day, tomorrow the second day, and the day after tomorrow the third day. The day before yesterday was considered the third day going in the other direction. There is a Hebrew idiom that means “it was not like that in the past” that says literally, “It was not like that yesterday, three days,” meaning, “It was not like that yesterday or the day before yesterday.”

We get one clear indication of this usage in the reply Jesus gave when he was told that Herod wanted to kill him. He said, “I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal. In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day.” This shows clearly that the “third day” is the day after tomorrow.

So the way people reckoned time, Friday would have been the first day, Saturday the second day, and Sunday the third day.

Was it a sin for David to have many wives?

Q. My question is in regards to David’s many wives, was that not considered sin? was it something kings shouldn’t do, a recommendation from the Lord, but not going against God’s command? I understand he had plenty of trouble at home because of all the children from different wives. But when he is called a man after God’s own heart, that makes me think his polygamy is not looked at as a sin.

Your question is similar to the one I answer in this post:

How could God call David a “man after his own heart” when he committed adultery and murder?

In that post, I note that God described David in that way specifically in reference to the way David would regard the kingship, by contrast to the way Saul as king had encroached on priestly powers. I say in that post, “David set an example for all subsequent kings by never acting as if he were a divine king or priest-king.” I think the phrase also references the way David always repented when confronted with his own sin. By contrast, when confronted with his disobedience, Saul did not repent but instead insisted that he really had obeyed.

God specifically confronted David, through the prophet Nathan, about his sins against Bathsheba and Uriah, and so, as I also say in that post,”no divine approval of David’s actions can be found in the earlier description of him as a ‘man after God’s own heart.'”

We may say the same thing about David’s polygamy. The law of Moses said specifically about any future king the Israelites might have, “He must not take many wives.” The term “many” is not defined in terms of a specific number, but it seems that David did have “many” wives. Before he became king over all Israel, he was king over the tribe of Judah in Hebron, and he had six wives at that point. The Bible then tells us that “after he left Hebron” to become king of all Israel, “David took more concubines and wives in Jerusalem.”

As you noted, this caused “plenty of trouble at home.” Absalom, the son of the third wife, murdered Amnon, David’s firstborn, the son of his first wife, in revenge for Amnon raping Absalom’s sister Tamar. Absalom later incited a violent rebellion against David and nearly displaced him as king. And even after David chose Solomon to succeed him, another son named Adonijah nearly took over the kingdom instead. Solomon ultimately had Adonijah executed.

This was a culture in which polygamy was accepted, particularly because it was an agricultural society that depended on human labor, and so families simply had to have children. Kings practiced polygamy to be sure that they would have surviving children who could succeed them on the throne. But it must be admitted that royal polygamy went way beyond that need, as kings  married the daughters of other kings to form alliances, and they also had large harems. The law of Moses warned that an Israelite king should not have many wives, “or his heart will be led astray,” and that is exactly what happened to David’s son Solomon. The Bible says that “he had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.” Specifically, the women he married in order to make alliances with other countries wanted to keep worshiping their own gods, and Solomon built temples for them and even joined them in worshiping those gods. For this God punished him by taking most of the kingdom away from his dynasty.

So there seem to have been many good reasons why the law told kings not to have many wives. David was thus not an exemplary king in that way. And so what I say in the other post also applies to your question: “No divine approval of David’s actions can be found in the earlier description of him as a ‘man after God’s own heart.'”

Did Joseph and Mary stop at the temple to dedicate Jesus on the way to Egypt?

Q. If Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt after the birth of Jesus, how old was he when he was presented at the temple in Jerusalem? Did they stop in Jerusalem first, or did they return after a short time in Egypt?

Joseph and Mary did not actually flee to Egypt until two years after Jesus was born. The Magi told Herod that they had first seen the star that led them to come worship the king of the Jews two years earlier. It was Herod’s attempt to destroy this new king by killing all of the boys in Bethlehem who were two years old or younger that led Joseph and Mary to flee to save Jesus’ life.

Luke tells us that Joseph and Mary presented Jesus in the temple “when the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses,” which would have been about forty days after he was born. It seems likely that they would have remained in the area of Bethlehem until then, since they were already so near Jerusalem, where the temple was. But after that, they went somewhere else. Matthew tells us that the Magi went into the “house” where the family was staying. So our traditional Christmas manger scene of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus with the shepherds and the wise men is not accurate. The wise men did not come to see Jesus at the same place as the shepherds.

Matthew does not tell us exactly where Joseph and Mary were with Jesus when the Magi came. While the teachers of the law told Herod that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, and the Magi headed there initially, Matthew says that they followed the star to where Jesus actually was. This could even have been back in Nazareth in Galilee. Herod the Great ruled both Judea and Galilee, so Jesus was in danger from him even that far away. That is why an angel warned Joseph in a dream that the family needed to flee.

How could Satan have fallen? And do some fallen angels oppose Satan as well as God?

Q. How, in the perfect environment of heaven and constant presence of God, did Satan fall? Eve was deceived by an already fallen Satan and influenced Adam in the book of Genesis. The fall of Satan is complicated to me as he, like Adam, was created perfect and given free will….his fall is a deep mystery to me.

Related to this, and I believe the answer has something to do with free will, does Satan have perfect control over the fallen angels? I.e., are some of them fallen from God and rebels from Satan, and do their own thing in opposition to both God and Satan?

The fall of Satan is indeed a deep mystery, but I share some thoughts about it in this post: Why did God create Satan? In that post I suggest, as you do, that the explanation for Satan’s fall lies in “the radical nature of the freedom that God has endowed each of His intelligent creatures with.”

As for whether some of the fallen angels are rebellious both to God and to Satan, I think they are all generally opposed to God, but that nevertheless there is much chaos and disorder among their ranks, so that they may often work at cross-purposes. God’s kingdom is one of order and harmony. Satan’s sphere is one of disorder and confusion.

When did Esau “break off the yoke” of Jacob?

Q. Isaac promised his son Esau that even though he had made his younger brother Jacob his “lord,” someday “you will throw his yoke from off your neck.” Did the yoke get broken off from Esau in the later episode when Jacob bowed down to Esau and called him “lord”? Was Esau saved?

As you suggest, I think it would be accurate to say that Jacob’s yoke was broken off Esau when Jacob returned from being away for 20 years and bowed down to Esau and called him “lord.” We may conclude this not just from the events of the narrative in Genesis, but from the very shape of the narrative itself. The episode in which Jacob cheats Esau out of his position as the family leader in their generation and the episode in which Jacob returns and makes restitution are parallel elements in an elaborate arrangement. Here is how I illustrate that in my study guide to Genesis. (You can read the study guide online or download it free at this link.) Note how episodes marked with the same letter balance each other:

A Jacob deceives his father and steals Esau’s blessing

B Jacob flees towards Harran and encounters God at Bethel

C Jacob arrives in Harran

D Laban deceives Jacob

E Jacob’s children are born

D Jacob deceives Laban

C Jacob leaves Harran

B Jacob returns towards Canaan and encounters God again

A Jacob returns Esau’s blessing and they are reconciled

So the narrative in Genesis is put together in such a way as to indicate that when Jacob came back home and returned Esau’s blessing, bowing down to him as his “lord,” that was a fulfillment of the promise that their father Isaac had made to Esau that he would eventually “throw off” the yoke of servitude to Jacob.

I talk more about how Jacob made restitution to Esau in this post.

As for whether Esau was saved, the Bible does not say specifically. I do not believe we should take Paul’s comments in Romans to mean that Esau was not saved. Paul is speaking specifically of which brother the covenant line would continue through, not of individual salvation, when he says that “in order that God’s purpose in election might stand,” Rebekah was told, “The older will serve the younger.” Paul also quotes the statement from Malachi, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,” but we need to appreciate that the Hebrew language uses the term “hated” in contexts like this to refer to a son or wife who is not favored, by contrast with one who is favored. The meaning is, “I favored Jacob, but I did not favor Esau.”

So, we do not know for sure whether Esau was saved. But we might conclude from the fact that Esau did not attack Jacob when he returned, even though he had said earlier that he was going to kill Jacob, that Esau somehow found the motive and power to forgive, and so perhaps he had experienced God’s forgiveness himself.

Why are the numbers 144,000 and 12,000 in Revelation so mathematical?

Q. In John’s vision in Revelation of the “servants of God” who were sealed, any ideas as to why these numbers (144,000 and 12,000 from each tribe) are so mathematical? That is, apparently the Lord picked these exact numbers to be included here. Just curious. Is there something more?

You are on to something here. Yes, those numbers are mathematical. 12,000 = 3 x 4 x 10 x 10 x 10, and 144,000 = 12 x 12 x 10 x 10 x 10. I discuss the symbolism of such numbers in this post: Are the numbers 3, 4, 7, 10, etc. intentionally symbolic in the book of Revelation?

I also have a separate post on, Who are the 144,000 in the book of Revelation?

In these posts I draw on my Daniel-Revelation study guide, which you can read online or download for free at this link.

How can we know that God’s presence is with us?

Q. How can we know that God’s presence is with us?

I think we essentially know that God is present with us by sensing God’s presence. It is the presence of an actual person, although that person is invisible and spiritual, not visible and physical. But I realize that this only changes the question to, “How can we learn to sense God’s presence?”

I believe this is indeed something that needs to be learned. The Bible tells us that when the future prophet and judge Samuel was a young boy, God called him at night, but he thought that the high priest Eli, who was raising him, was calling him instead. The Bible explains, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord.” And so he could not recognize his voice. I think this is a good analogy for sensing God’s presence. We may need to come to know God better in order to recognize his presence when it is with us. Or we may simply need to understand that we can sense God’s presence, just as young Samuel needed to be told that God might be calling him with his voice.

I would suggest that if we diligently practice the things that attract God’s presence, we will notice a difference from what things were like before we started to do that, and also a difference when (unfortunately) we fail in some of those ways and grieve God’s Spirit and drive away his presence.

Here are the disciplines I have in mind. For one thing, holiness attracts God’s presence. If we willingly forsake anything that we know is displeasing to God, particularly things that God has convicted our hearts about, that should attract God’s presence, and we should sense it. For another thing, if we genuinely and sincerely promise God that we will unconditionally obey whatever he asks us to do, that should also attract God’s presence, and we should sense it. Further things we can and should do are to forgive freely anyone we have been holding a grudge against, and resolve to seek reconciliation with anyone we have become estranged from, to the extent that that is safe and will not simply give them the opportunity to wrong us again. If we choose not to worry but instead trust God for the future, that will bring peace to our hearts and attract God’s presence as well. And so forth.

In short, we should put into practice all of the things that the Bible already encourages us to do that will bring love, peace, and joy into our hearts, and that will make those hearts a welcoming place for God’s presence. As I said, we should then notice a difference from the way things were before, and we should discern that that difference is the presence of God. Particularly if, unfortunately, we disobey, or sin, or break a relationship, we should then notice another kind of difference—the absence of a presence we had grown accustomed to and come to cherish. We will then be eager to do what is necessary to welcome God’s presence back into our lives.

I have told many people that one of the scariest statements in the Bible for me is the one that is made about Samson after he breaks his vow of dedication to God: “He did not know that the Lord had left him.” The results were disastrous. May we all cultivate the disciplines that attract God’s presence, and may we all learn to sense God’s presence, so that something like that never happens to us.

How did the sun, moon, and stars move, according to ancient Hebrew cosmology?

Q. My question is about biblical cosmology, specifically about the relationship between the sun, moon, and stars and the firmament. If we assume that the firmament is a solid dome, and the Bible says the sun, moon, and stars are IN the firmament, then it seems the sun, moon, and stars are somehow embedded in the firmament. But to an ancient Hebrew looking up at the sky, it would have been obvious that the sun, moon, and stars MOVE across the sky. A rotating firmament might seem to fix that problem, except that it also would have been obvious that the sun, moon, and stars—and “wandering star” planets—move across the sky at DIFFERENT speeds. I’m trying to make this cosmology as logically coherent as possible, and this issue bugs me. One solution I have in mind is that the firmament can be defined as both the solid dome and some of the space underneath the dome; thus, the sun, moon, and stars could move in the space just below the dome—just as Genesis say birds fly across the face of the firmament. But does this solution actually accord with the Biblical Hebrew describing the cosmology?

In our book Paradigms on Pilgrimage: Creationism, Paleontology, and Biblical Interpretation, my co-author Stephen J. Godfrey and I note this same problem. This book is now available online as a blog. I will quote from the post in which we discuss this issue. After noting that the sun first appears on the fourth day of the Genesis creation account, even though there is light on the first day, and that the moon sometimes appears during the day, even though it is supposed to “rule the night,” we say:

“But these are not the only ways in which the account of the fourth day confounds our modern cosmological expectations. Perhaps even more important is the effect of a small preposition: in. Genesis tells us that God set the sun, moon and stars in the dome of the sky. We today would instead place them beyond the sky—outside our atmosphere. Even if we grasp the idea that the Genesis author is picturing a solid sky, we might still imagine these lights shining through from the back. But the account says quite clearly that they are in the dome. The particular means by which they are attached is not specified; nor is the means by which they move through the sky. But there can be no doubt about where they are, and it is not where modern cosmology would put them. Nevertheless, it is exactly where they appear to be, to the naïve observer.”

So, even though I co-authored a book that discusses Genesis cosmology, in that book itself I admitted that I did not know precisely how the ancient Hebrews understood the sun, moon, and stars to be moving in the firmament. However, since then I have come across the idea that they were understood to move on tracks on the surface of the firmament. The Bible does not say this specifically, but that explanation may be as good as any. I think that if the sun, moon, and stars had been understood to move just in front of the firmament, then the same expression would have been used for them as for the birds, on the face of the firmament, rather than in the firmament.

I hope this is helpful. You may be interested in reading the entire section of our book that is dedicated to Genesis cosmology, which starts with this post.

Why does Luke mention Phillip’s daughters?

Q. Why does Luke mention Phillip’s daughters in the book of Acts?

This is an excellent kind of question to ask, because Luke no doubt had a lot of material to work with as he was putting together the book of Acts, and presumably he did not include everything that was available. So we can and should ask why details like this one were included. How do they fit into the overall plan and theme of this biblical book?

The episode you’re asking about comes in one of the “we” sections of the book of Acts, in which Luke is relating events that he took part in personally. Luke is accompanying Paul on his way to Jerusalem to deliver the offering from the Gentile churches, and about this specific incident, which took place as the travelers neared Jerusalem, he says: “We continued our voyage from Tyre and landed at Ptolemais, where we greeted the brothers and sisters and stayed with them for a day. Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied.“

By “one of the Seven,” Luke means that Philip was one of the seven people who had earlier been appointed to oversee the distribution of food to needy members of the church in Jerusalem. But Philip did many things after that to help spread the good news about Jesus, and at this point he was no longer living in Jerusalem. Luke probably mentions that the daughters were “unmarried” to indicate that they were still living at home. And while his language could be understood to mean that they “prophesied” as a regular ministry (some Bibles say that they “had the gift of prophecy” or “were involved in the work of prophecy”), it seems to me that they must have prophesied while Paul and Luke were staying in their home, and that is how Luke knew that they had this gift.

So why does he mention it? Was it just a memorable experience along the way? He probably had more reason than that, since the travelers no doubt had many other memorable experiences on this trip that he could have included. I think Luke mentions these four prophesying daughters specifically because this detail illustrates the overall theme of his book. As I say in my study guide to Luke-Acts (which you can read online or download at this link), Acts describes how the community of Jesus’ followers “spread throughout the Roman Empire as it proclaimed the good news about Jesus to people of many different backgrounds, languages, and regions.”

Early in the book, Luke records how the Holy Spirit descended on the young community on the day of Pentecost and enabled its members to speak all  the different languages of the visitors who had come to Jerusalem for that festival. That was a picture of how the community would spread to people of all backgrounds. To explain to the crowd that gathered what was happening, the apostle Peter quoted these words from the prophet Joel:

In the last days, God says,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your young men will see visions,
    your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
    and they will prophesy.

The Pentecost episode is like an overture, encapsulating the themes that play out in the rest of the book. The prophetic gifting and ministry of Philip’s daughters is a fulfillment of the words, “Your … daughters will prophesy.” So I think that when Luke was putting together the book under divine inspiration, he recognized that staying in their house and witnessing them using this gift was not just a memorable personal experience, but something that he should share with his readers as an example of how the words of Joel continued to come true as the Holy Spirit empowered the community of Jesus’ followers—men and women, young and old, of different social classes—to spread the good news.