May Prophecy Interrupt a Sermon?

[LinkH]

Biblicist wrote,

Where do I get the limit of two or three prophecies!….considering the surrounding context this is the only response that is available to us.
As I have already addressed this question in my earlier post, as have many others, I think it is best to refer you back to that post and with the other posters who have also said much the same.
This is the only viewpoint that is accepted within the Full Gospel movement; there are of course some who for whatever unstated reason do choose to ignore Pauls strict admonition.

I read your previous message in which you asserted a limit of two or three prophecies per meeting. What I am asking is how you get that from the passage in question. I don't see where you dealt with the verses and how you can see that in the verses in question. More on that below.
Also, you say that this is the only viewpoint that is accepted within the FUll Gospel movement. Maybe you can define Full Gospel movement. If you mean to include the Pentecostal, Charismatic, and so-called Third Wave movements, I am sure that is not true. Probably a majority of people in the movements don't have a position on the issue. Your viewpoint may be the majority view in the Assemblies of God and various other parts of the Pentecostal movement. But all that is irrelevant. The issue is what the Bible actually teaches.
Historically, I doubt the Azusa Street revival followed your interpretation. They had meetings going continuously all night long for some periods of the revival if I remember right. If a church meeting doesn't end all week, then the quote of a prophecies would be filled up may be the first day of the revival. If God wanted to move someone to speak in the meantime, I guess that would be against the rules.
Let's actually look at the verses in question from I Corinthians 14.

29Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge.
30If any thing be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace.
31For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted.
Notice in verse 29, if many translations, say the NIV for example, are correct, then the verse says to let two or three prophets speak, and doesn't limit how many times they can prophesy. I've read the verse can be translated or interpreted so that 'two or three' refers to their prophetic utterances. Notice 'per meeting' is not in the verse.
Let's assume that's right and look at the verses that follow. One way of looking at the verse is that an undetermined number of prophets is prophesying two or three words. The prophet who happens to be speaking is to hold his peace and let the non-prophet prophesy. In this way ye may all prophesy. 'For' in verse 31 ties it in to the thought in verse 30. The first, the speaking prophet, holding his peace, is what allows all to prophesy one by one.
Another way to look at this is to view 'prophet' loosely as referring to whoever is speaking. The prophets speak two or three words, and then judgment is made. This does not require prophecy cease after two or three words, but requires that judgement is made after two or three words.
We know that there is not a limit of two or three prophecies under either of these scenarios, since verse 31 says that 'ye may all prophesy one by one....' If there were a limit of two or three prophecies per meeting, then it would not be true that ye all may prophesy one by one. There were more than three people in the church at Corinth. (We can count more than that mentioned in the epistle. Crispus, Gaias, the household of Stephanus. If Stephanus had more than himself in his household, that's more than three right there. Acts says many believed and were baptized.)
Add to that the fact that Paul presents a good thing in a church service-- all prophesying, earlier in the chapter.

24But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all:
25And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.
This goes along with the thoughts in verses 1 and 39 which sandwich this passage in, in which Paul encourages the Corinthian believers to covet to prophesy.
Let us continue on to verse 26.
26How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.

It is permissible for 'every one of you' to have a revelation, as long as it is done unto edifying. With all these people talking in church, why would people speaking specifically under the moving of the Spirit be limited to three utterances for the whole meeting, but not teachers or singers?
I think the reason churches want to interpret the passage to mean there is a cap of two or three prophecies per meeting is because they want to do their liturgy, even if it is the informal unwritten Pentecostal style liturgy, which includes a sermon from the pastor. Nowhere does Paul say to make sure one of the elders gives a long sermon in the church meeting. The instructions Paul give for church meetings are about how the different members of the Body share with one another through their gifts and talents in an orderly manner. We need to set aside the concept of church meetings inherited from Protestantism and look at the instructions in the passage.

The real irony here is that a lot of churches that teach a cap of three prophecies per meeting (if they teach on the topic at all) use the NIV, which takes 'two or three' to refer to the number of prophets:
29 Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said.
Notice this translation does not put a cap on the number of prophecies a prophet could give. And I doubt most people who teach this cap of two or three prophets per meeting probably don't know that the Greek is ambiguous and could allow for two or three to refer to utterances.

It’s one thing to ignore this admonition but of course many also permit the unbridled use of corporate tongues during the main meetings which to me beggars belief.
Considering that Paul has gone to great lengths in 1Co 14 to denounce this practice, as it only serves to turn away the unbelievers and when it is unaccompanied by interpretation it does not benefit or uplift the congregation - some also choose to ignore this as well, and this has me dumbfounded!

I agree with you on that. I think part of the problem comes from the fact that some Pentecostals think that you can't speak in tongues unless God makes you. Some of the Pentecostals from Holiness type groups believe that way. AOG churches tend to have more of a prayer language type view of it. And I don't get why some of the Charismatic churches just ignore I Corinthians 14 except for a few verses used as prooftexts and tell everyone to speak in tongues. Some of churches that do this don't seem to be into studying through passages in detail.

 

[LinkH]

But it's consistent with his instruction to test everything given in 1 Thessalonians. It doesn't have to be a specific command. If we are instructed to test the spirits, and everything else, submitting a prophecy to a team of people who will pray about it, is sensible - a team means you won't just get one person's input. If a prophecy is from the Lord, he is able, and willing, to confirm it to others.

You are overlooking the fact that I Corinthians 14 gives us some specific instructions on how to handle prophecies. We can't just ignore the specific instructions and come up with our own. We need to follow the Lord's commandments on this issue, not just make something up that seems reasonable, drawing on some loosely related scripture, while ignoring the specific commandments on how to do church.

Another comment I would like to make on what you said, is if teams are so good, why don't you have any trust in the congregation? The binding and loosing verse in Matthew 18 is given right after a verse on the church gathering and exercising church discipline on a man. There is authority in the assembly. Why filter prophecies through one or a team of leaders, who may not be prophets, when you have a congregation that may have believers who are prophets, or have the gift of discernment, and other gifts. Not all prophets are elders and not all elders are prophets. We are a body and each part needs to minister to the other parts. A lot of that is to take place in the church gatherings as we see in I Corinthians 14. I Corinthians 12 tells us about body parts needing each other. It is no mistake that these are in the same book. There is an argument that flows from chapter 12 through chapter 14. We are supposed to see the body functioning in church.

You're assuming that a) a congregation will be made up entirely of Christians and[/quote[

If having unbelievers present limits the functioning of the body, why not have meetings when they aren't present? We don't see the apostles evangelizing by getting people to come to church. At times in Acts, unbelievers dared not join believers. The apostles went to places outside of church gatherings to evangelize. Paul mentions the possibility of an unbeliever or unlearned attending. What affects the man positively in his example is all prophesying. This scenario wouldn't happen if all prophecies got filtered through a leadership team.

b) that, even if none of them have the gift of discernment, they will all be people of prayer who know how to wait on the Lord for an interpretation and can recognise his voice above their own desires. The leadership team, in our church anyway, includes the minister, deacon, another preacher and stewards. Most of these have been prayerfully appointed, some have had training and are aware of, if not experienced in, the gifts of the Spirit.

That's great about your leadership team. If you will notice in Ephesians 4, though, part of the role of the so-called 'five-fold ministers' is to equip the saints for works of service. If you have so much trust in the Lord to gift the leadership team and work through them, why not trust the Lord to work thorugh the saints?

And if they aren't saints, then they need to be ministered to until they repent. Those who claim to be brethren who won't repent need to be expelled. Those who are too immature to discern can grow in a church where the gifts are in operation and prophecies are judged in the group. Those who are not particularly gifted in discernment can use the gifts they are gifted in. If the congregation is allowed to function, then hopefully everyone will come to see who is gifted in what area and begin to function like I Corinthians 12 teaches us a body should.

Yes, some may still get it wrong, but the benefit of a team is that you do not have one person saying "thus saith the Lord" and everyone else just has to take their word for it; you have respected, trusted Christians saying, "we've prayed about this word and we do believe that it is indeed from God."

Or we could follow the order the Lord gives us through Paul in this passage. Paul, in writing about appointing elders, wrote of those 'whose mouths must be stopped.' These are people who speak perverse things, not saints who are faithfully exercising their gifts.

Church leaders trying to keep the saints from speaking and filtering everything through church leaders is probably what killed the flow of the gifts in churches in the second or third century in the first place.

If someone speaks a false word, the leaders and other gifted members can correct the situation right there publicly. The early church faced its problems with its 'open floor.' In Acts 15, we see that at a meeting of the church in Jerusalem, some Pharisees got up and started arguing for Gentile circumcision. They were wrong, but the apostles did not decree that 'regular believers' weren't allowed to teach in church anymore unless they were ordained, or that all words had to be run through the apostles, not where we can see in scripture. And by the time I Corinthians was written, the rules Paul revealed were still in play.

The Lord himself has not commanded this. Paul is writing to a specific church that was unruly, rowdy and in which there were quarrels, as well as wrong teaching.

I definitely disagree with you. The implication of the passage is that Paul is giving the Corinthians commandments of the Lord that apply to all churches. Let us look at the passage.


33For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
34Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.
35And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
36What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only? 37If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.

Paul appeals to the universal practice of the churches of the saints in verse 33. In verse 36, he reminds them that the word did not come forth from them. We know from the Old Testament that the word would come forth from Zion. In Acts, we see the preaching started in Jerusalem. We also see in verse 36 that the Corinthians were not the only ones who had received the word.

If the word had not originated with the Corinthians, and they were not the only ones to have received it, then they did not have the right to change how church meetings functioned either. Their prophets had to function like the Jerusalem prophets, or the Antioch prophets, and if they were truly prophets, they should acknowledge that these instructions Paul gave were actually commandments from the Lord.

Paul's instructions to Corinth are based on universal commandments for the churches.

What he said may well have beeen God's word to that church for that situation, but that doesn't mean that all churches today have to operate in this way because God has commanded us to.

Did the word of God come forth from your church? Is your church the only one that has received it?

If not, then why would your church, or mine for that matter, have any more right to deviate from the commandments of the Lord for church meetings that apply to 'all the churches of the saints'?

Did Paul tell all his other churches that this was a command from the Lord and give them teaching about prophecy - no.

Show me in the Bible where it says that Paul did not teach the other churches these things? I Corinthians 14 indicates his instructions were principles applied to other churches as well. If none of the other churches needed straightening out through an epistle, that doesn't mean Paul didn't teach them while he was with them.

What??
So you're saying that anyone can stand up in church and say anything they like - claiming it comes from God,

You should realize that a lot of people who grew up in an Assemblies of God church, or various other Pentecostal or Charismatic churches are quite used to an environment where someone can stand up in church and give a prophecy. Usually it happens between songs. This is very widespread, or at least it used to be before Pentecostal churches started being less Pentecostal in practice. There were plenty of prophecies given like this at Azusa Street.

In I Corinthians 14, we see that people were allowed to give revelations like this within certain guidelines. You agree with that, right? You were just disagreeing about the extend to which the passage applies to us, right?

because they have to have the right to "prophesy",

The passage says 'ye may all prophesy' but I don't like to see this as a matter of our rights. It is the right of the Spirit to speak through the saints. We are the Lord's servants.

and if anyone listening gets hurt/confused by the "word" and goes away believing bad teaching - that's ok, the elders will sort out the mess?

The Bible indicates that elders are supposed to stop the mouths of those teaching false doctrines, not the saints who are doing all things unto edifying.

And elders and other gifted believers can correct right there in the assembly to keep people from going away hurt. The prophets are to speak two or three and then the other are to judge. It doesn't say don't let the prophets speak-- have them pass a word to the deacon board, who gives it to the elders, who decide on whether it is to be shared, or whatever.

So I could stand up and say "this is God's word to you; have faith in me and you will never be depressed again. Believe in me and you will always be joyful." Someone listening to that might think, "so that means that if I'm depressed then I'm not trusting in God - I can't be a real Christian or I wouldn't be unhappy".

Or pastor or teacher could say the same thing. Does that mean we can't have pastors or teachers at church?

Supposing they don't ask the Minister/elders if they have heard the word correctly but just go away and take an overdose? Or join a cult or another religion, or pass this wrong teaching on to their friends or children? Supposing they and their family eventually need counselling to sort out the mess - who is going to pay for all that? Supposing it was a member of a cult who stood up and passed on bad teaching, under the guise of having a "word from God"?

Where do most of the religious false teachings, false words, and cultic practice come from in your experience, from leaders or 'regular believers.' I think I've heard of more of them coming from church leaders. That doesn't mean I think churches shouldn't have leaders.

Why don't we just obey the Lord? If we run into problems by obeying the Lord, aren't we in a better position to handle them than if we run into problems not obeying Him? The Lord has given commands for how to handle prophecy in church. Why would we think we could make up a better set of rules on our own, that contradict His?

Or supposing it was someone who read their horoscope and was interested in the occult? The congregation will hear that "word" and some might not have the maturity, or ability, to be able to discern the truth.

The elders and the congregation as a whole have a responsibility to deal with such a matter. If you are allowed to give a prophecy in a church, and you give a false one, you should be willing to deal with the consequences.

A few years ago, the minister of my church, and a few others, were standing on the street, witnessing and handing out tracts. My minister spent quite a long time with a man who had been very hurt by some of the past teachings of the church. Years of his life spent in unhappiness and away from the church because of something that the church had taught or someone had said. Was this said through a "prophecy"? Who knows, but the principle is the same. Why risk subjecting people to hurt, pain or confusion just because one person has to be allowed to stand up and say something that they believe is from God?

I'd say the odds are that the guy who was hurt was hurt by something coming from one of the official leaders of the church. How is this an argument for filtering prophecies through a leadership team?

 

[SpiritPsalmist]

This tells us that the Holy Spirit came upon the people as they were listening, not that these people immediately began to prophesy and interrupted what Peter was saying.

Did you miss the part that says "while Peter was still speaking.....(v 46) they were heard speaking in tongues and praising God"? It's all part of the same context. There is no indication that the what was heard part waited until after Peter finished talking.

I'm not arguing one way or the other, I'm just showing that in scripture the Holy Spirit is not stuffed into the little boxes that we've made for Him. In our churches maybe but not in scripture.

 

[Strong in Him]

Did you miss the part that says "while Peter was still speaking.....(v 46) they were heard speaking in tongues and praising God"? It's all part of the same context. There is no indication that the what was heard part waited until after Peter finished talking.

I'm not arguing one way or the other, I'm just showing that in scripture the Holy Spirit is not stuffed into the little boxes that we've made for Him. In our churches maybe but not in scripture.

Yes and sometimes I might make a comment to my neighbour while the sermon is going on, or a child may start talking to its parents. That is still not the same as saying that someone can stand up and begin to deliver a prophecy while another person is preaching. That would be a deliberate interruption and bad manners, imo.

One of the reasons it is thought that Paul told women in 1 Cor 14 to be silent in church is just this; that they often interrupted and asked their husbands about things they didn't understand instead of waiting til they got home. These women may have been asking legimate questions - not just idle chit chat - yet Paul still tells them to keep quiet and ask when they get home. It's a bit inconsistent to teach that people may interrupt the sermon when they have a word from the Holy Spirit but not when they have a question about a sermon that has been inspired, presumably and hopefully, by the Holy Spirit.

 

[Strong in Him]

You are overlooking the fact that I Corinthians 14 gives us some specific instructions on how to handle prophecies. We can't just ignore the specific instructions and come up with our own. We need to follow the Lord's commandments on this issue, not just make something up that seems reasonable, drawing on some loosely related scripture, while ignoring the specific commandments on how to do church.

How we "do church" now is not the same as how they "did church" then. Are you saying it should be? So we should get rid or pews, powerpoint, organs, musical instruments, visual aids etc, wear robes and learn NT Greek?
Are you saying that if someone were walk to the front of the church and tell the minister they have a word from God they have sinned, because they "should" have stood up, immediately interrupted whetever was going on at the time and spoken whatever words were in their heads - even though they may have been their own? The church in Corinith were used to people prophesying; their problem was that everyone tried to do it at once withouyt listening to, or respecting, one another. Maybe your church is used to people propphesying too. That's great - ours isn''t. Some people might not even know what a prophecy is and just assume that someone was interrupting the service with their own ideas.

Another comment I would like to make on what you said, is if teams are so good, why don't you have any trust in the congregation?

If the congregation is used to hearing and receiving prophesies, knows how to discern between a true and a false prophecy, or wait on God for a confirmation of the prophecy or interpretation of the tongue - sure, why not? Many aren't.

I'm not confident that I would be able to immediately tell if a word was from God or not.

Why filter prophecies through one or a team of leaders, who may not be prophets, when you have a congregation that may have believers who are prophets, or have the gift of discernment, and other gifts.

It works the other way too - why allow a congregation, made up of many people, all at different stages of faith and from different backgrounds and influences - to judge whether a prohecy is from God, when you may have a prayer/leadership team made up of people who have specific gifts and have been prayerfully chosen for their ability to discern things like this?

And if they aren't saints, then they need to be ministered to until they repent. Those who claim to be brethren who won't repent need to be expelled. Those who are too immature to discern can grow in a church where the gifts are in operation and prophecies are judged in the group. Those who are not particularly gifted in discernment can use the gifts they are gifted in. If the congregation is allowed to function, then hopefully everyone will come to see who is gifted in what area and begin to function like I Corinthians 12 teaches us a body should.

Maybe things are like this in your church - they aren't in ours.

If having unbelievers present limits the functioning of the body, why not have meetings when they aren't present?

Put a notice outside the church saying "please don't come into our building today expecting to find God, this service is just for us believers", you mean? Not going to happen. The housegroups are the places where people can be built up, ministered too, receive the Spirit and teaching on the Spirit and gifts, not a church service. When we open our doors on a Sunday morning, anyone may come in. And that's how it should be.

Paul's instructions to Corinth are based on universal commandments for the churches.

But he didn't give the same instructions and teaching about prophecy and the need for order in worship to the Romans or Philippians. Why not? Because they didn't have the same questions and problems that the church in Corinth had.

If he was writing to some of our churches today, he would answer the specific questions we had on an issue, not give blanket advice to everytone. There would be no point in giving our church, for example, instruction on speaking in tongues - because hardly anyone knows what it is and it's certainly not practiced. Same with prophesy.
You have to start where people are - not where they're not.

Show me in the Bible where it says that Paul did not teach the other churches these things?

Show me where he did. That passage in 1 Corinthians is not repeated in Ephesians, Thessalonians or anywhere else. No where does Paul say to his churches, "I greet you all in the name of the Lord Jesus, and don't forget the Lord's command to allow people to prophesy whenever they want. Don't commit the "sin" of letting them give their prophecy to an elder first".

You should realize that a lot of people who grew up in an Assemblies of God church, or various other Pentecostal or Charismatic churches are quite used to an environment where someone can stand up in church and give a prophecy.

I'm sure they are - but AOG and Pentecostal churches are not the only churches around. I have almost never heard a prophecy in any of the churches I've attended - maybe once or twice, but that was in a small group when we had a mission team from another church.
It may be normal for you and so you assume it is normal for, and widely practiced by, everyone else. That is not the case.

Must go - may come back to this later.

 

[Biblicist]

LinkH

(# 42),

You should realize that a lot of people who grew up in an Assemblies of God church, or various other Pentecostal or Charismatic churches are quite used to an environment where someone can stand up in church and give a prophecy. Usually it happens between songs. This is very widespread, or at least it used to be before Pentecostal churches started being less Pentecostal in practice. There were plenty of prophecies given like this at Azusa Street.

I can add my fullest agreement with this statement.

Unfortunately it does seem that many even within the Full Gospel movement have become a bit overly reliant on being told what to think is true or not. For those who have experienced congregational worship that allows the Spirit to freely speak through the individual without the need for any vetting, it can become fairly easy for the congregation to realise when it is the Spirit speaking and if the person prophesying has correctly conveyed what the Spirit had to say. There often seems to be a fair amount of peer pressure that can help a ‘wayward’ individual who might seem to be a bit off with their ‘prophecies’.

(# 41)

Also, you say that this is the only viewpoint that is accepted within the FUll Gospel movement. Maybe you can define Full Gospel movement. If you mean to include the Pentecostal, Charismatic, and so-called Third Wave movements, I am sure that is not true. Probably a majority of people in the movements don't have a position on the issue. Your viewpoint may be the majority view in the Assemblies of God and various other parts of the Pentecostal movement. But all that is irrelevant. The issue is what the Bible actually teaches.

Over the past 12 months I have slowly being replacing the term Pentecostal for Full Gospel as both Pentecostals and Charismatics tend to reflect and promote specific understandings of the Full Gospel message which I do not see as always being Biblical. Its use states that I am attempting to adhere to the Word of God which is itself the Full Gospel. When it comes to the so called “Third Wave” I usually refer to this movement as being “Wimberites” or neo-charismatics which removes any suggestion that it is a move of God which the use of “Third Wave” unfortunately implies.

I should have stated that I was making reference to the academics within both the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement (PCM) and to my knowledge they would all follow the classic understanding of 1Co 14:29 that it is 1 + 1 + 1 prophets with interpretation following after each with a total of three prophecies during any single meeting.

With 14:31 For you can all prophesy in turn … Pauls use of “For” connects vss. 29 & 30 by saying that the two or three prophets may prophesy in turn and in order, not that all within the assembly can prophesy during any single meeting.

 

[SpiritPsalmist]

Yes and sometimes I might make a comment to my neighbour while the sermon is going on, or a child may start talking to its parents. That is still not the same as saying that someone can stand up and begin to deliver a prophecy while another person is preaching. That would be a deliberate interruption and bad manners, imo.

One of the reasons it is thought that Paul told women in 1 Cor 14 to be silent in church is just this; that they often interrupted and asked their husbands about things they didn't understand instead of waiting til they got home. These women may have been asking legimate questions - not just idle chit chat - yet Paul still tells them to keep quiet and ask when they get home. It's a bit inconsistent to teach that people may interrupt the sermon when they have a word from the Holy Spirit but not when they have a question about a sermon that has been inspired, presumably and hopefully, by the Holy Spirit.

I did not say that it should be taught to interrupt.

I do understand your point and for the most part agree with you. However, I just showed a place in the Bible where the Holy Spirit did interrupt. Now you can believe He didn't but it looks pretty clear to me that "while Peter was still speaking, others were filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in tongues and praising God" and by all recording of the scene Peter did not get to finish his sermon. These people were NOT whispering their tongue speaking and praises of God as you would to your neighbor sitting next to you in a church service. It also was not women shouting down to their husbands asking questions. The manifestation of the Holy Spirit interrupted Peters preaching.

I don't think it should be a routine occurrence but on occasion, for whatever purpose the Holy Spirit deems, it does/will/can/may happen. HE is not confined to the boxes that humans put Him into.

 

[LinkH]

LinkH
Over the past 12 months I have slowly being replacing the term Pentecostal for Full Gospel as both Pentecostals and Charismatics tend to reflect and promote specific understandings of the Full Gospel message which I do not see as always being Biblical. Its use states that I am attempting to adhere to the Word of God which is itself the Full Gospel. When it comes to the so called “Third Wave” I usually refer to this movement as being “Wimberites” or neo-charismatics which removes any suggestion that it is a move of God which the use of “Third Wave” unfortunately implies.

Wagoner coined the term Third Wave, and I think he had something a lot more broad in mind than just the Vineyard movement. He was thinking of 'empowered evangelicals' who weren't historically part of the Charismatic movement. I spent some time in a Vineyard home group and attempted church plant in the early '90's. I also went to a Congregational Holiness church in the morning at that time. I saw a lot more people getting words of knowledge and revelatory gifts in the Vineyard than in most Pentecostal churches I attended. They would just pray for each other for a really long time at the end of the meetings, and the gifts would start to flow. When the Toronto thing hit, the flow of the gifts seemed to die down quite a bit, the group I went was handed over to different leaders who had their own group soon after and half of it went back to the city that planted it, so it was a different group, too.

I should have stated that I was making reference to the academics within both the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement (PCM) and to my knowledge they would all follow the classic understanding of 1Co 14:29 that it is 1 + 1 + 1 prophets with interpretation following after each with a total of three prophecies during any single meeting.

With 14:31 For you can all prophesy in turn … Pauls use of “For” connects vss. 29 & 30 by saying that the two or three prophets may prophesy in turn and in order, not that all within the assembly can prophesy during any single meeting.

You have two problems with this approach. One is that verse 29 does not limit the number of words an individual prophet speaks if you use this interpretation. The second is that you have 'ye' referring to the prophets, rather than the readers, like it does consistently throughout the epistle. 'Prophets' are third person. Why would Paul refer to them in the second person all of a sudden in verse 31? It isn't consistent with Paul's comments about all prophesying when the unbeliever comes in earlier in the chapter either. It doesn't fit well with every one of you having a revelation, etc. in verse 26.

 

[Strong in Him]

I do understand your point and for the most part agree with you. However, I just showed a place in the Bible where the Holy Spirit did interrupt.

Absolutely. The Holy Spirit can, may, and should be free to do whatever he pleases. And as God is a God of order, I think that were this to happen, there'd still be good order, assuming it is all of the Spirit. That's the difficulty - if someone stands up in the middle of a sermon, says "thus says the Lord" and delivers a "prophecy"; how do you, and the congregation, know it's from the Holy Spirit? And whatever goes on in other churches, I have to say that my church (and probably the others in our Methodist circuit) are not used to that and would see it as rather rude - if they understood it at all. A preacher could be preaching his own mesage in his own strength, but it's likely too that he/she will be preaching in the power, and by the inspiration, of the Spirit.

I also think it's quite possible for God to give a word to someone, which they then write down and take to the front to give to a Minister, or whoever. It may not be how it happened in Paul's day, but God knows us, where we are, what we are happy with and can cope with, and is sensitive to that - although being Sovereign God he can of course also come in power and blow all our nice cosy routines and liturgies away. (Yes please!) Personally I am so unused to this sort of thing that if someone interrupted one of my sermons with a word, I'd do exactly what my minister suggested to me - get them to write it down and submit it to the prayer/ministry team, and then continue with what I was saying. I don't feel I have the gifts or authority to decide if someone else's "word" is truly from God.

By the way, I didn't set out to pick a quarrel with you, I just wasn't sure if the verse you were quoting was an illustration of what we are discussing.
I think it's probably best if I bow out of this now, in any case. I have no experience of this.

 

[lismore]

The first thing that came to mind for me was “Let all things be done decently and in order.”

But what If our definition of 'decently and in order' and the Holy SPirit's are not the same?

 

[JIMOH]

I believe an anointed sermon is a form of prophesy.
We are told to sit and wait until one is finished before we move.
Wait until the end of the sermon.

 

[LinkH]

I believe an anointed sermon is a form of prophesy.
We are told to sit and wait until one is finished before we move.
Wait until the end of the sermon.

Rather, the passage in question tells the prophet speaking to hold his peace if another receives a revelation.