The gift of prophecy is the Spirit-given capacity to speak forth a message from God—whether the foretelling of things to come or, more broadly, the forth-telling of God’s truth for edification, exhortation, and comfort. In the Old Testament the prophets were the authoritative mouthpieces of God, whose word was the very Word of the LORD, binding and infallible, attested by perfect fulfillment, and the false prophet was put to death. In the New Testament, prophecy appears among the gifts, ranked by Paul above tongues because it edifies the church in understandable speech: he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort. The great interpretive question is the nature and authority of New Testament congregational prophecy. Cessationists hold that prophecy, as a revelatory gift conveying the word of God, was infallible and authoritative like its Old Testament counterpart, served to lay the foundation of the church alongside the apostles, and ceased with the completion of the canon, since ongoing infallible revelation would rival the closed Scripture. Some continuationists, by contrast, distinguish the foundational, canonical prophecy of the apostles from a lesser, fallible, Spirit-prompted congregational prophecy that must be weighed and tested and carries no canonical authority. All orthodox parties agree on the decisive guardrail: no claimed prophecy may add to, contradict, or rival the closed and sufficient Scripture, every prophetic claim must be tested by the Word, and the spirits must be tried, for many false prophets are gone out into the world. Prophecy, rightly understood, always serves and submits to the written Word; it never supplants it.