I was reading 1 Corinthians 14 and to know more about what was meant by the word prophesying so I looked up this commentary I found the following passage which I found compelling ...b/cI often feel like there's something wrong in our churches today as we just go back to the same church same preacher...& sit silently. Maybe sing a few songs and then leave and never have any interaction ...never do the Christians in the audience get to speak or to convey any of their feelings or maybe they even have a direct message from God... I wonder as this commentary also does whether there's something wrong with our churches today ..was it meant to be a little bit of a dictatorship so to speak...w/ one preacher's interpretation of scripture..his worldview & biases & favoritisms dominating the congregation maybe for even a half-century or more. Is something wrong with the church today?
"Prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14: my experience.
By reading 1 Corinthians 14 it is obvious that in the first century church gatherings, prophecy (and speaking in tongues with interpretation) was the rule! Not the exception! In contrast, In most of the gatherings I have been these gifts that God has given for the edification of the church are simply non-existent. They exist as gifts. In fact they may even be accepted theologically by the respective congregation. Yet they are never applied. The truth is that in many congregations there is simply no space for them. The gifts that God gave for the edification, exhortation and comfort of the body have been replaced by a rigid program that has the form either of a formal liturgy, where one person does the same week after week (catholic / orthodox church), or, in the protestant church, of a program (it is also a liturgy in some way) that says first we sing, then the pastor and perhaps a couple of others pray, then we have the sermon and then the meeting ends. If somebody thinks that God has a message for the gathering, there is simply no way in many churches to say it! The participation of the people is practically forbidden! In some other gatherings if somebody wants to bring forth a message from God, he has first to tell the pastor or the elders, then they have to think about it and whether it comes from the Lord and then allow or not allow the person to share it. But in the first century church, in the church the epistles speak about, it was not like this. See what Paul says:
