Prophets are God’s spokesmen. They speak for God and speak forth God; sometimes they also predict. According to the Bible, the main function of a prophet is not to predict the things to come but to speak for God. For example, in Exodus 3 and 4 when Moses was called by God, he told God that he was slow of speech and of a slow tongue (4:10). So God gave Aaron to Moses to be his prophet (4:14-16; 7:1). Aaron did not predict for Moses; rather, he spoke for him. In the whole Bible, to prophesy is mainly to speak for God and to speak forth God; sometimes it is also to predict. To predict, however, is secondary. This is the proper meaning of prophesying in the Bible.
A prophet is also called a seer. First Samuel 9:9 says, “Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer.”
The prophets before the age of the prophets were Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, and the Gentile prophet Balaam.
Abraham was a prophet of God. According to the record in Genesis 20, when Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah, God intervened and said to him, “Now therefore restore the man his wife; for he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee, and thou shalt live: and if thou restore her not, know thou that thou shalt surely die, thou, and all that are thine” (v. 7). And Abimelech restored Sarah to Abraham. So Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maidservants, so that they bore children (vv. 14, 17). Here God used Abraham as His spokesman.
Moses was also a prophet of God. Deuteronomy 18:15 says, “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken.” As a prophet, Moses typified Christ (Acts 3:22-23). He was used by God to lead the children of Israel out of Pharaoh’s usurpation and Egypt’s tyranny; he further led them to Mount Sinai to serve and to offer sacrifices to God, to build the tabernacle, and to go through the trials in the wilderness. During those forty years, Moses served as God’s spokesman, speaking for God, speaking forth God, and predicting. He predicted that the children of Israel would forsake God and be cast by God into all the nations, but that when they would repent and turn to God, He would gather them from the nations (Deut. 29:25-28; 30:1, 3). He also typified Christ as the Apostle sent by God for His people (Heb. 3:1-2).
Samuel was also a prophet of God. First Samuel 3:19-21 says, “And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord appeared again in Shiloh: for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord.” God established Samuel as a prophet to speak for Him. God prophesied through him that the house of Eli would deteriorate (1 Sam. 3:12-14) and that a man after God’s heart would succeed Saul to the throne (1 Sam. 13:13-14).
Formerly, the priests occupied an important position, because the people needed to go through the priests when they served and drew near to God. But from the time that God established Samuel as the prophet, and after the death of the priest Eli, the priests no longer occupied the position of importance. At that time, when the people or the kings wanted to know God’s desire, they had to go through the prophets.