Because God shows no partiality towards people who strive to be righteous, I try to imitate him.
If, in the past, a prophet has been proven to be trustworthy, I will then believe his or her new prophecies until and unless one of these new prophecies is proven to be false.
Acts 10:34-35 Opening his mouth, Peter said: “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, 35 but in every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him.
Ephesians 4:11-13 And it was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for works of ministry and to build up the body of Christ, 13until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, as we mature to the full measure of the stature of Christ.
Acts 2:17 “’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.
I suppose this is the Lutheran in me then. It seems to me that what has been received since the beginning is sufficient; I am in need of no new revelation; I have Christ, I have His apostles, I have His Word, I have His Church, I have His Spirit in which I receive all gifts from God, to be made righteous, holy, and comforted by the Gospel and instructed in God's way.
And, from Christ, and from His Apostles, and from His Church, and from His Word, and from His Spirit I know the warnings against chasing after false teachers, false prophets, and chasing after doctrines that tickle the ears.
And so when I profess, in the Apostles' Creed, my faith in the Holy Spirit, and in Christ's one and holy catholic Church, and in the Communion of Saints, I am confessing that all that I need, and all I ought desire, is to be found here in the bosom of Christ, where there is rest for my weary soul, and comfort that only the Comforter gives. That in Word and Sacrament I receive everything; and by His Law I am restrained, to know right and wrong and, by His grace and the power of the Spirit, walk in new obedience; to confess my sins, repent, and acknowledge my unworthiness before God as a sinner; and by His Gospel I am freed, awaken and made alive by grace, with an unguilty conscience before God, for Christ having made Satisfaction on my behalf has become my righteousness before the Father, and in this grace I might trust, believe, and live as a freeman. Hoping, trusting, living in Christ and from Christ.
What could a supposed "prophet" offer me what I do not already have from two millennia of faithful Christian teaching and practice? What new insights into the mind of God could there possibly be outside of what God has already declared from the beginning? If I believe what is written, and what has been handed down to me from the very beginning, then I have an inheritance of treasure to which nothing more could be added.
Not all, wrote Tolkien, that glitters is gold.
And, no, I am not against prophets; I believe the history of the Church is filled with many prophets. But they are not those who call themselves prophets, nor do they come bearing "revelation"; but those who boldly speak the word as it has been received, even when the powers and principalities would wish to silence them.
If you were to ask me an example of a prophet in modern times, I would point to someone like Dr. Martin Luther King or Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The prophetic is not in "revelation" or fortune-telling; but in a faithful declaration of Christian truth.
-CryptoLutheran
