Although the rabbis believed that with “the deaths of the last prophets at the end of the Persian era, the Spirit of Prophecy withdrew from Israel,”[4] they were convinced that it would someday return. Rabbi Tanuma firmly declared, “In this world, only a few individuals have prophesied, but in the World to come all Israel will be made prophets.”[5]
The New Testament and the Spirit of Prophecy
As the New Testament explodes on the scene, it is bursting with the life of the Spirit. The Gospels, in particular, are proclaiming “that the longed-for universal age of the Spirit had at last arrived and the age of the prophets and prophecy, if it had indeed died out, was now being reborn.”[6]
Prophetic activity is now being accentuated in the infancy narratives (Luke 1:39-50; 1:67-79; 2:27-32; 2:36-38), as well as the life and ministry of Jesus (Luke 4:17-22). An outworking of the Spirit is also what later characterized the apostolic commissioning and activation (John 20:21-22).
