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HE more things change, the more they stay the same. One would think that the problems that Paul saw and dealt with in Corinth would be things of the ancient past. The church would and should get the point and do better, right? Wrong. Some of the exact same heterodoxy (that was polluting the church of Corinth) is still around today; namely the misuse and abuse of a couple of the spiritual gifts (gifts which happen to be more easily counterfeited than others are). Perhaps all spiritual gifts can be counterfeit to some degree, but the gift of tongues and the gift of prophecy seem to be more readily redefined and highjacked. And, no surprise, underneath this confusion in the church is the hand of the author of confusion, the devil himself. He promotes ignorance, disorder and usurpation. God is NEVER the originator of such nonsense.
Now, in the simplest sense, prophecy involves receiving truth (that God reveals) and declaring it; most specifically and most frequently, truth about the future. 1st Corinthians 14:1 indicates that all the gifts (including love) should drive us toward the declaration of God's truth. Above all others, one gift was not being used properly in Corinth. They were trying their hand (or mouth) at tongues. This gift, as defined in Acts 2:4-11, was supposed to prove the power of God on an evangelist, and it allowed said evangelist to give the gospel to whoever he met, no matter what language they understood. Biblical tongues were meant to function as a momentary correction of the mess that was made back in Genesis 11:9 (when the people unified against God and against His program, requiring a confusion of languages in order to divide the sinners at Babel). Simply put, tongues were supposed to be used to make the gospel understandable to sinners. This is not how the Corinthians were using them.
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