Let's take a look at the original post:
I believe Paul (in I COR 14) was mainly talking about PREACHING, TEACHING and EXHORTING, because these things edify the church. Do you agree with me?
No, I don't agree. While I would say that it is possible for someone to prophesy during a traditional 'sermon' or for the content of a prophecy to be exhortation or teaching,
Romans 12 treats prophesying, teaching, and exhorting as different gifts.
'Preach' is usually used to refer to evangelizing outside of a church meeting, depending on your translation. (The KJV translates a word for dispute or discourse in Acts 2 using 'preach.' But usually uses 'preach' to translate words used in an evangelistic context.)
Evangelists, in the Biblical sense 'preach.' So did the apostles. They proclaim the Gospel to unbelievers to win them to Christ. In the first century, they actually spoke to crowds of non-Christians rather than having a crusade full of Christians like we have now. Timothy was told to do the work of an evangelist in the same passage he was told to preach.
Romans 12 lists different gifts, including prophecy, teaching, and exhortation. Paul treats these as separate gifts.
Why should the definition of 'prophesy' change in I Corinthians from something different from what it meant in the Old Testament? Prophesying is revelatory. The Spirit of God gives the individual words to speak. The Old Testament prophet often said 'Thus saith the LORD' and gave a
'first person' message from God. By first person, I mean he said "I" and "Me" to refer to God speaking through him.
What do we see in the
New Testament? In Acts,
Agabus prophesies over Paul and starts off "Thus saith the Holy Ghost".
In the Old Testament, a priest might teach the writings of Moses. Israel was unfaithful and got away from the Law, but in the time of Ezra, the priests were teaching the law. Prophesying was different. Zechariah and Haggai would say, "Thus saith the Lord" type prophecies, saying what God was telling them. Here, we see a distinction even in the Old Testament between the teaching priests and the prophesying prophets.
Prophesying is revelatory in I Corinthians 14. While giving instructions on how 'ye may all prophesy', Paul says
'if a revelation cometh to one sitting by, let the first hold his peace. For ye may all prophesy one by one....'
So we see that the content of prophesying is revelation.
Look at verse 26. Paul gives instructions for how regular members of the body can sing and speak in such a way to edify the church. "....e
very one of you hath a psalm, hath adoctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying."
First, I'd like to point out that we are talking about the Bible here, not how most people do church. The Bible does not say still and listen to one pastor speak for half an hour. Rather, what Paul calls the 'commandments of the Lord' in the passage have to do with members of the congregation speaking in an orderly, edifying manner. There are specific rules on how some of those individuals are to speak in tongues, interpret and prophesy.
So notice in verse 26 that 'doctrine' and 'revelation' are different categories. One might teach doctrine with the gift of teaching. Some translations translated this as 'teaching' rather than doctrine. And prophesying shares revelation as we see elsewhere in the chapter.
Please note that in the hypothetical example Paul gave, if all prophesy, an unbeliever or unlearned person who comes in may fall on his face and say that God is truly among you when the secrets of his heart are prophesied. There are occasions when prophesying mentions things to an individual that the person doing the prohpesying cannot naturally know. I've seen plenty of this.
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