'Can You Hear Me Now?': Making the case for modern-day prophets

By Matthew Thayer, Op-ed contributor Saturday, September 19, 2026

Ask any filmmaker what the most important thing about a film is, and you’ll hear the same answer: It’s all about the story.

As a documentary filmmaker, the raw power of stories fascinates me. Human beings crave them.

But the best stories are the ones that cause us to entertain new ideas, teaching us how to think. 

In my latest film, “CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?” I tackle the idea of modern prophecy — from a scientific, historical, theological, spiritual and even political viewpoint. Friends warned me not to tackle the subject. Part of my own brain objected. Entire groups of Christians no longer believe prophets exist today. After a recent screening, a gentleman cornered me in the lobby, determined to convince me prophecy and prophets no longer exist in our time. 

Why exactly is this topic so controversial?

There is a vigorous and necessary conversation around this today, particularly considering recent exposures in certain ministries that have misused and abused the gifts of the Spirit. However, most of the arguments I hear disavowing prophecy today are piecemeal theology — disembodied verses yanked out of Paul’s letters and stuffed with modern meaning. They import assumptions that would have been foreign to Paul and his first readers.

Let's read the actual source.

The lens Jesus handed us

In John 13-17, the night before the cross, Jesus tells His confused friends the story isn't ending, it's changing narrators. He promises the Spirit, who would lead us into all truth, and says, “He will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:12–13). Before this, He said, “My sheep hear my voice” (John 10:27).

Jesus Himself tells us we will hear and know His voice. Now let’s look at how He taught us to reason through this by discussing parenthood.

This next verse isn’t about prophecy. Not trying to pretend it is. It's simply a verse about how to think. Jesus argues from what you already know about fathers to what you don't yet know about God.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? … how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9–11).

Most read this verse and think, “Jesus is saying God is a good and generous Father. Wonderful.” True. But that only takes the words at face value. Instead, He hands us our own experience as parents and says: use this lens.

A father who won’t talk

All my life I’ve heard, “God is alive and wants to have a personal relationship with you.” It’s an eminently biblical idea. However, in Christian circles that object to prophecy, those very same people insist, “God doesn’t speak to people in visions or dreams or prophetic utterances anymore. The gift is no longer active. He only speaks to us through the Bible.”

Run that through the father lens. Let’s just say I tell my kids: “I love you. I really want to have a relationship with you. But I’m not going to actually speak to you. If you want to hear my voice, you have to read this book that I wrote before you were born.” No father any of us would call good would say that.

Scripture is inspired, it's the plumb line, and anything the Spirit says will never contradict it. But the claim He doesn’t speak to us falls flat when using the lens Jesus gave us about the Father.

Weigh what is said

What about a good prophet who gets something wrong? Here's what this debate usually misses: the New Testament never treats congregational prophecy like an Old Testament oracle. The old prophet said, ‘Thus says the LORD’ and was staked to it — miss once, you're a false prophet (Deut. 18:20–22). But Paul tells the Corinthian church something different: “We prophesy in part” (1 Cor. 13:9), and “let the others weigh what is said” (1 Cor. 14:29). Fallibility isn't a loophole I'm smuggling in. It's built into Paul’s instructions. God speaks; the church tests; keep the good, drop the rest.

Paul assumed people would get it partly wrong — and instructed what to do about it instead of shutting the gift down. Wayne Grudem, in The Gift of Prophecy, argues that 1 Corinthians 14:29 hinges on the verb diakrinō (“weigh,” “evaluate,” “sift”). This assumes prophecies will contain a mix. The church's job is to sort it, not to accept or reject wholesale.

Any father who has botched relaying his wife's instructions knows exactly what “in part” feels like, and nobody gets divorced over it.

What story are we in?

The debate about whether prophecy and prophets are for today isn’t really a debate about a few Frankensteined verses from Corinthians or Hebrews or Ephesians. It’s a debate about what kind of larger Story we think we’re in.

The story we hear: a loving Father who spoke in the past but decides to write down everything instead, and then goes quiet. A relationship now conducted entirely through a collection of canonized holy documents. This is a story with a plot, characters and genre. And like every story, it teaches the people who believe it to expect … silence. The goal of the Christian life becomes a journey of packing the head with doctrine but hearing nothing more. People tend to hear what they’ve been trained to expect.

The story Jesus told: a Father who leaves the house rules on the fridge and still picks up the phone. One who posts a record of His past faithfulness precisely so His kids can recognize His voice now, and one who chooses to speak through imperfect, human messengers who occasionally garble the message — yet doesn’t disown anyone over it, because that’s not what good fathers do.

I believe the second story is the true one, not because I’ve won the proof-text war — nobody ever wins that — but because when I run the first story through the lens Jesus handed us, it falls apart. No father that any of us would call good behaves that way.

Stories teach us how to think. Jesus told us about a Father by telling us a story about ourselves. The least we can do is think the way He asked us to.