God’s Prophetic Spirit

As has been shown, the Holy Spirit provides prophetic revelation and abilities to man. As one should expect then, the function of evil spirits is to remove prophetic insight and allow lies to be believed and evil actions to prevail. Below is a list of verses relating to this discussion.

A survey of the more than two dozen passages in written prophets of the Old Testament (Isaiah-Malachi) which refer to the Holy Spirit will show that those later prophets of Israel used the same language and their words carried the same meaning as did the words and meaning of those prophets contained in the earlier writings of the Old Testament.

References to the work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian or in the church are rarely discussed in light of Old Testament revelation about the Holy Spirit. It seems that we take the words of the disciples of John in Acts 19 to mean that little to nothing about the Holy Spirit can be gleaned from the Old Testament, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit” (Acts 19:2).[2] However, their words do not accurately reflect what the Old Testament reveals about the Spirit.

The work of the Holy Spirit with man is always prophetic in its nature when that work is done directly with man. Whenever He comes upon man, rushes upon him, falls upon him, fills him, dwells in him, anoints him, or at least a dozen other images expressed in the Bible, the Spirit provides man some kind of prophetic ability.