Scholars have long studied Matthew’s Gospel for its extensive use of the Old Testament regarding the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy. However, scholarship has not completed much work in the area of prophetic realization within the context of Matthew’s church audience, that is his readership. This topic is especially relevant for Pentecostal readings of Matthew.
The following two questions governed my approach to this subject: How did Matthew view the spiritual gift of prophecy and its use in the church community? Moreover, what does an evaluation of Matthew’s audience demonstrate for the Pentecostal church regarding the spiritual gift of prophecy?
In addition, Pentecostal scholars have completed much work on pneumatology in Luke and John, but Matthew seems to have been passed over by them. This is a scholarly oversight since Matthew spends much time discussing prophets. He references OT prophets (Matt 1:22, 2:5, 15, 17, 3:3, 4:14, 5:17, 7:12, 8:17, 11:13, 12:39, 13:35, 16:14, 21:4, 22:40, 23:29, 30, 31, 37, 24:15, 26:56, 27:9), the current prophetic ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus (Matt 11:9, 13:57, 14:5, 16:14, 21:11, 26, 46), and the future church (Matt 5:12, 10:41, 23:34).
After studying the Gospel of Matthew in-depth and teaching it at the Bible College level for the past eight years, I have discovered that Matthew highlights fulfilled prophecy and demonstrates how it dynamically moves from the OT to Jesus, then to the church. This fresh reading through the lens of a Biblical Pentecostal Hermeneutic provides a fresh look at how the Gospel of Matthew is not only retrospective but prospectively applies to a prophetic community of Christians who were navigating the realities of prophetic ministries in Judaic and Christian contexts.
I have discovered that a Biblical Pentecostal Hermeneutical evaluation of the First Gospel reveals Matthew as a prophetic reformer who wrote to a church community that operated as first-century reformation prophets within a Judeo-Christian context who challenged the Jewish religious leadership and developed limitations for prophetic ministry that served as guidelines for fellowship. The modern Pentecostal church would also benefit from these principles. I will present the evidence for this thesis according to the following sections: (1) Matthew’s references to prophets, (2) prophets in Jerusalem and Antioch in the Book of Acts, and (3) prophets in the following literature: (a) Josephus’s writings, The Didache, and Ignatius of Antioch’s epistles.