-Altho this Mysterious Message, this Good News of great joy for all peoples was mentioned throughout the years to other generations as God was communicating with His people, it had never been unpacked with the level of detail and specificity and clarity with which God’s Spirit revealed it to the apostles and prophets in that first century A.D.
-Note that Paul mentions both apostles and prophets. The office/gift of apostleship was indeed a select and fairly finite group, but the gift of prophecy was apparently accessible to all, post-pentecost (cf 1Corinthians 14.1). And yes, these were New Testament prophets Paul was talking about (cf Ephesians 2.20), not the ones we find operating in the Old Testament (one or perhaps two at a time, speaking to entire nations). The whole point Paul is making is that even those previous guys, in spite of receiving some scant details from the Lord as to His plans for future rescue, even those guys were kept at least somewhat in the dark. These New Testament guys (and gals!), while they operated perhaps on less of a national level than did their predecessors, speaking more directly to local assemblies, there is no doubt that they were indeed operating and that they were accorded considerable respect and status in the life of God’s people, at least in the early days of Christianity (cf Acts 11.27, 15.32, 21.9; Romans 12:6; 1Corinthians 11.4-5, 12.10, 12.28-29, 13.8-10, 14.1-6, 14.22, 14.29-32, 14.39; Ephesians 4.11; 1Timothy 1.18, 4.14). And it was these prophets (some of them at least) who along w the apostles were collectively given much greater clarity about the mystery.
-It is rather unfortunate that in many modern uber-educated evangelical circles today (at least in the west) this prophetic function has all but ceased to be exercised in any formal or substantive way. Some insist that the gift of prophecy itself has ceased, been phased out and removed altogether, along with the other so-called sign gifts, that there is no longer any need for the sign gifts now that the Church and the Canon (of Scripture) have been established, or perhaps that the sign gifts still are being given on a limited basis among those peoples where a Gospel foothold has yet to be established. Is it not possible that for all our advanced western learning and reasoning skills we have immunized ourselves against much more than a whiff of the supernatural? Instinctively skeptical, we doubt, we explain it away, we expect it not, and we settle for a far cry less than the greater works which Jesus promised. It is written that Jesus could do no miracles in a certain place due to the unbelief of those who lived there - could perhaps the same be said of the Church in the west? Have not many in the west in a quest to quench false teaching along with charismatic excesses have gone so far as to quench the Spirit right out of the church? We know so much (and we need - and pray - so little). We have it all under control. And we have become an impenetrable fortress of formal doctrine and practice, practically impervious to the moves of the Spirit, the rushing Wind, that divine Zephyr, blowing where He wants, filling and gifting and guiding and empowering and unifying - and speaking. In the Spirit - that’s what Paul says. In the Spirit. The atmosphere in which God’s people live, the air we breathe, the clothes we wear (clothes of power! cf Luke 24.49), the means by which we conduct ourselves (as one!), the wings on which the Church soars to show off the love and breathtaking goodness of Christ. But have the wings been clipped? Largely devoid of the Spirit, do not God’s people fairly resemble the newly-(un)clothed emperor, rather naked, suffocating in denominationalism and worldliness? Are we not mostly fractured, impotent, insignificant, cultural afterthoughts? God help us...
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