1). The gift of prophecy: The gift of prophecy is the sudden supernatural ability to speak by divine inspiration in the speaker’s known language. It can always begin with, “Thus says the Lord.”
This gift is not preaching or teaching. Inspired preaching and teaching do contain an element of prophecy because they are anointed by the Spirit, but they are not prophecy in its strictest sense. Many times an anointed preacher or teacher will say things by sudden inspiration that he didn’t plan on saying, but that is really not prophecy, although I suppose it could be considered prophetic .
The gift of prophecy by itself serves to edify, exhort and console:
But one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolation (1 Cor. 14:3).
Thus that the gift of prophecy, by itself, contains no revelation. That is, it doesn’t reveal anything about the past, present, or future, as do the word of wisdom and word of knowledge. As I stated previously, however, the gifts of the Spirit can work in conjunction with one another, and so the word of wisdom or word of knowledge can be conveyed by means of prophecy.
When we hear someone deliver a prophecy in a gathering that foretells future events, we really didn’t hear just a prophecy; we heard a word of wisdom conveyed through the gift of prophecy. The simple gift of prophecy will sound very much as if someone were reading exhortations from the Bible, such as “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” and, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Some are convinced that New Testament prophecy should never contain anything “negative,” otherwise it supposedly does not fit the parameters of “edification and exhortation and consolation.” That, however, is not true. To limit what God may say to His people, only permitting Him to say what they consider “positive” even if they may deserve some rebuke, is to exalt oneself above God. Rebuke can definitely fall under the categories of both edification and exhortation . I noticed the Lord’s messages to the seven churches in Asia, recorded in John’s Revelation, certainly contain an element of rebuke. Shall we discard them? I don’t think so.
2). The gift of various kinds of tongues and the interpretation of tongues: The gift of various kinds of tongues is the sudden supernatural ability to speak in a language that is unknown to the speaker. This gift would normally be accompanied by the gift of the interpretation of tongues , which is a sudden supernatural ability to interpret what was said in an unknown language.
This gift is called the interpretation of tongues and not the translation of tongues. So we should net expect word-for-word translations of messages in tongues. For that reason it is possible to have a short “message in tongues” and a longer interpretation, and vice versa.
The gift of the interpretation of tongues is very similar to prophecy because it also contains no revelation in itself and would normally be for edification, exhortation, and consolation. We could almost say that, according to 1 Corinthians 14:5, tongues plus interpretation of tongues equals prophecy:
And greater is one who prophesies than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may receive edifying.
As I previously stated, there is no instruction given in the Bible regarding how to operate in the power gifts, very little instruction about how to operate in the revelation gifts, but quite a lot of instruction given on how to operate in the utterance gifts. Because there was some confusion in the Corinthian church regarding the operation of the utterance gifts, Paul devoted almost the entire fourteenth chapter of First Corinthians to that issue.
The foremost problem concerned the proper usage of speaking in other tongues because, as we have already learned in the chapter about the baptism in the Holy Spirit, every believer who is baptized in the Holy Spirit has the ability to pray in tongues any time he desires. The Corinthians were doing a lot of speaking in tongues during their church services, but much of it was out of order.
