WWUTT 2030 Q&A Bible Translations, Cessationism, Responding to Sam Storms and Remnant Radio

What is the difference between literal and equivalent Bible translations? Are the miraculous gifts still at work in the church today? Did the miraculous gifts come to an end even during the time of the apostles?

The answers to these questions, when we understand the text.

You are listening to When We Understand The Text, an online Bible ministry so that we may know all the riches freely given to us by God. For questions and comments send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Moving to Arizona and Thanking Supporters

Thank you, Becky, and greetings everyone. We apologize for the delay, but hey, at least it's only been a week since we've been on, not like the whole month of July that we missed. And in that week that we've been off, we've moved.

So we're no longer in the state of Texas, we're now in Arizona. I have already assumed preaching at Providence Reform Baptist Church in Casa Grande, and it is a privilege to be here. We've moved into the house that we are renting.

We're not homeowners anymore. Well, we are in that the house we own in Texas is not yet sold. Pray that that will happen soon. But we're now renting and I haven't been a renter in over 14 years. So this has been fun learning the ins and outs of renting again.

There's a great room in this house that is perfect for us to record in. So I don't have to build a room like we did with our house in Texas. Though this room is carpeted, it's not exactly furnished for being able to do podcast recording.

If you're listening through headphones, you can tell there's a bit of reverb here. So I still need to hang some things on the walls, fill my shelves up with books. And those steps will help to kind of reduce the excess noise level in here, which I hope to be able to get some of that done soon because there's some other recording projects that I want to get in on, including recording more what videos only done 20 videos this.

Year.

That's like a low for me. I've never been that few on the video. So I want to try to get 10 done at least before the end of the year so I can get over 30 done in one year. By the way, about to hit 10 years of what videos.

It has been 10 years since I did the very first videos, those ones that were like four and a half minutes long. But this coming April will be 10 years since I started doing the 90 second videos. So yeah, trying to get over that 400 mark.

By the time we get to the 10 year mark 10 years of doing what videos that's amazing. I really did not anticipate that I was ever going to do these that long. But I've still got stuff to say still got more videos I want to make.

So we thank you for your support and your encouragement. There have been some people that have contributed monetarily have given us donations to help us with our move. I thank you so much for that. It has helped pay for gas or it helped pay for pizza.

There have been a lot of people that have helped us get here have donated money or time or something to that effect. And I don't have I don't have a list of people in front of me that I could read off and thank I'd be afraid of doing that anyway, because I'm going to forget somebody and someone will be offended.

But we just want to say thank you to everybody who has supported or prayed for us, or encouraged or gave money or something like that for for us in this move. The church has helped us tremendously by covering covering expenses.

The church we left in Lindale, the church that we've come to here in Casa Grande, everybody has been wonderfully supportive. So we thank you so much and we're thankful to our God, our Savior Jesus Christ, who by his providence has worked all of this out.

No pun intended, you know, since I'm now the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church. But but yes, the Lord has worked in these things greatly for us and we could not be more blessed. So we thank you so much to everybody and still want to be able to record these podcasts and give the Bible teaching that we've been committed to doing for free through this program when we understand the text.

This is a Friday edition in which we take questions from the listeners. I'm going to come back to a question I've been answering in the last several parts, and then we're going to get back to our regular programming starting on Monday as I pick up again in Matthew.

What am I up to now? Matthew 15 is what I'm ready to jump into. And then that next part of Isaiah on Thursday is going to be in Isaiah 40. And then, God willing, Becky will be back on with me next week.

Hey, we're we're in we've got a recording studio in our house. It should be easy for me to get her in here. I thought it was going to be easy for me to get her in here for this episode, and that hasn't worked out.

We're still tired from moving. So as soon as the opportunity presents itself, we'll get together and we'll record and together be able to thank everybody for their love and support as we've been making this transition.

Cessationism and the Meaning of Miraculous Gifts

So like I said, I want to come back to something that I've been doing for a little while. This is what is it part three or part four now? I think part three in responding to the Sam Storms article in which he was responding to the documentary cessationist.

By the way, you can still find that documentary online. You can find it through Amazon. I think it's available through Vimeo. You can also go to cessationistmovie .com and you can either buy a digital copy and watch it on your TV or computer or whatever, or you can get a physical copy that will be sent to you in the mail.

The cessation is documentary that is available now. It debuted at the last G3 at the end of September. Sam Storms wrote a multi-part article. I think it's like nine parts. I'm not going to go through all nine parts, but he wrote a multi-part article responding to cessationist.

I've been responding to what Sam Storms had written, and I'm going to skip to part two. I spent two episodes just responding to part one, so we're on to part two now of this Sam Storms article. Storms is, of course, arguing for the continuous perspective, the idea or the understanding that the miraculous gifts of the spirit are still in regular work in the church today, whereas I'm coming at this from the cessationist perspective, the understanding that these miraculous gifts or the regular use of these gifts have ceased.

We don't see them on the level or with the regularity that we see these gifts at work in the book of Acts. Storms of course is taking the position that they are still regularly at work today. He can't show any of these miraculous signs at work, but that's the position that he takes.

Before responding to this next part of Sam's article, let me mention a couple of things.

Here.

First of all, being the Friday edition, we take questions from the listeners, and you can send those questions into whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. I've been building a backlog of questions, and I hope to be able to get to some more of those questions this next Friday.

Once again, you can send those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. If you want to contribute to the program, we do this for free. We don't require anybody's donations in order to do what we do.

It is just our desire to want to teach the word of God. But if you would like to give a gift, you can send it via PayPal to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. That same email address, you can send a donation that way.

Some folks have sent me gifts to the church. They were already at the church waiting for me. I appreciate that, your contributions that you've made, just like a little housewarming gift or something like that.

I don't have the address of the church in front of me, and I don't have it memorized.

Yet.

You can always look up Providence Reformed Baptist Church of Casa Grande. The website, in fact, is prbcgc .com. Look us up online, and you can find the church phone number, address, things like that. Once again, thank you for all your support.

Bible Translation Preferences

I did a poll online just a few days ago in which I was asking about Bible translations. The question was, what's your favorite Bible translation? Where do you fall in? Here were the four categories that I presented.

Number one, the essentially literal category. Some of the Bible translations that are essentially literal include the Legacy Standard Bible, the New American Standard Bible, the English Standard Version, King James and New King James, and the Christian Standard Bible.

Now, I included the CSB, but I did have a couple of people push back on me and say that the CSB actually doesn't fall in essentially literal. It's actually a dynamic equivalence. I would say the CSB is right on the line.

You could either pull it into the essentially literal category or in the dynamic equivalence category. I'm not real familiar with the CSB. If I read it more, then I would probably definitively say, no, it belongs in this category.

Because I don't know it that well, I've relied on others to help me categorize the CSB. For now, I'm leaving it in the essentially literal category. What is essentially literal? That means that it is as close to word-for-word as we can get.

We can't have an exact word-for-word translation because it wouldn't make any sense going straight from Hebrew into English or straight from Greek into English. The Old Testament written in Hebrew, the New Testament written in Greek.

You can't go exactly word-for-word. That's the case with translating any language into another. But as close as we can get it from the Hebrew and the Greek into English, that's your essentially literal translations.

The second category I presented was the dynamic equivalence category, which would include the NIV, New International Version, the New Living Translation, the Good News Translation, and the CEV, or the Contemporary English Version.

Like I said, some would even put the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible, in that category as well. Dynamic equivalence is not trying to go word-for-word, rather the philosophy of translation is more thought-for-thought.

A sentence might try to be like another sentence, rather than being as close to word-for-word, but just trying to convey that thought as accurately as can be. You lose a little bit in translation when you try to go thought-for-thought.

Those are your translations that fall in the dynamic equivalence category. First of all, we have essentially literal. Secondly, we have dynamic equivalence. Thirdly, we have paraphrase. Paraphrase would be almost like the translator is just putting himself into the translation.

You would include the message in that category, the passion translation, and also the Living Bible, the TLB, would fall in that paraphrase category. These are translations that I strongly discourage. I don't think anybody should be using paraphrase translations.

A lot of times they aren't even close to what the original text was saying. And then finally, the fourth category that I included was other, or I don't know. Maybe you don't know what you prefer, or what translation you're reading, and what category that it falls into.

But those were the four that I presented. The essentially literal category, that's number one. Dynamic equivalence, number two. Paraphrase is number three. And then miscellaneous, or I don't know, as category four.

How did this poll come out? I had 1 ,784 votes. That's a pretty good turnout. 94 came out essentially literal. So I've got a great audience. Those are the translations that you want to pick from. So again, the translations that when we understand the text is most regularly recommended.

We've recommended the English Standard, the New American Standard 95, the King James and the New King James, and then the one that we've added in the last year or two has been the Legacy Standard Bible.

All of those falling in that category of essentially literal. So 94 of my audience on X says that they prefer an essentially literal translation. That's great. That's exactly the kind of Bible translation that you should select.

At 5 was the dynamic equivalence. So that includes New International, NLT, Good News Translation, and the CEV, as I mentioned. 5 of my audience likes a dynamic equivalence. And then the other 1 was split between paraphrase or other.

And incidentally, more of that 1 was on the side of the other than on the paraphrase. Very few in my audience would even select a paraphrase, or at least very few of the persons that came across that poll.

So that's great. Those were some good results. I was genuinely surprised by those results. I would not have guessed that essentially literal would have been over 90%. So well done, folks. Those are the kinds of Bible translations that you want to pick from.

Again, I highly recommend the LSB, especially if you've not committed yourself to a particular essentially literal translation. A lot of people like the ESV. Crossway has done a tremendous job with marketing the ESV.

And they've also made the ESV cheap. They are not stingy with their copyright. So it's easy to use it in publications and not feel like you have to follow up with a lot of copyright rules and stuff like that in order to use the ESV.

Whereas the Lockman Foundation, which owns both the LSB and the NASB, they do tend to be pretty stingy with how their translation gets used. And for that reason, among others, I'm sure. But that has a great deal to do with why the NASB and the LSB have not been more popular.

Now the LSB is really growing in popularity. And I think the LSB is beginning to pass the NASB, especially since the Legacy is such a much better translation than the NASB 2020, when they came out with their new translation of the NASB just a few years ago.

So the LSB has surpassed it in that sense. And then, of course, nothing is ever going to outsell the King James. It is just the best-selling translation in history and probably will continue to be. It may never be surpassed.

But I would recommend the New King James over the King James Bible, just because the English in the New King James is much easier to understand. But if you would prefer something translated from the Textus Receptus, then the New King James would be the way to go.

So there's the poll that I did on Bible translations. Great to see how that came out. And thank you to those who voted. All right, let's get back to the topic at hand here. And to begin, I'm going to read from 1 Corinthians 14, which was a passage that I had read from last time in my review of Sam Storm's article.

I'll begin in verse 1 and read through verse 5. This is out of the Legacy Standard Bible. Pursue love, Paul says, yet earnestly desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy. For one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men, but to God.

For no one understands, but in his spirit he speaks mysteries. But one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and encouragement. One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but one who prophesies edifies the church.

But I wish that you all spoke in tongues, even more that you would prophesy. And greater is the one who prophesies than the one who speaks in tongues unless he translates so that the church may receive edification.

But now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what will I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation or of knowledge or of prophecy or of teaching? That was through verse 6 that I read there.

But thus says the word of the Lord. In the last episode when I did this critique of Sam Storm's article, I qualified some things here and qualified them a little bit better than I believe Storm's did or the guys at Remnant Radio.

In addition to responding to Sam Storm's, I've also been playing clips from Remnant Radio because they've been doing a multi-part series in which they've been critiquing the cessationist documentary.

I think they're through 7 parts at this point. I quit listening somewhere around part 5. I think I got through part 5. I've not listened to part 6 and part 7. But they're continuing on. They are still trekking on and critiquing this particular film.

I'm not that dedicated to responding to some of the counter-arguments, although I am going to present part of one of their arguments again here in the same argument, or it's at least accompanying the same argument that Sam Storm's presents in part 2 of his response to the cessationist documentary.

So once again, in defining our term, cessationism is the understanding that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit have ceased, or at least the regular usage of those gifts. We don't see them with the same kind of regularity that we see them in the Book of Acts.

A cessationist is not going to say that all miracles have ceased. God will still perform miracles. If it is His will, He will do something miraculous, but it's rare. I can tell you, I've never witnessed a miracle.

When we're talking about a miracle, we're talking about something supernatural, something that cannot be explained through any natural explanation. We're not talking about, say, a life. I know it's a word that we tend to throw around a lot, like whenever a baby is born, we'll say the odds that this child overcame to come into this world, the uniqueness of this particular child in this life, this is indeed a miracle.

And yeah, I would say there is something miraculous there, but that's not what we're talking about when we use that word miracle. We're talking about something supernatural that has taken place by the power of God, and there is no other way to explain it, no way naturally to explain this thing that has happened.

These miracles are not in regular practice. There are not modern day prophets that are predicting the future and then those things coming true. There are certainly no prophets that have some sort of 100 accuracy.

If a prophet is ever wrong, a person who proclaims to be a prophet says that God has spoken to him and if what he has said is wrong, he has said, thus sayeth the Lord, and then this thing that he says is going to transpire doesn't happen, then he is a false prophet.

And scripture has given us clear guidelines on how to test prophets in this way, according to Deuteronomy 13 and 18. Prophecy that's done like this is something miraculous. If God were truly speaking to a person and they were to articulate what God has said to them, then we should expect that whatever they have said that God said should happen.

And if it does not, God has said in his word, I did not speak to that man, don't listen to him. Man or woman, I guess would be the case. So there are no prophets, there are no modern day apostles. For qualifications for the apostles, as we read about in the scriptures, include seeing the risen Christ and having been appointed to the office of apostle by Christ and nobody is seeing the risen Lord.

Jesus in fact said in Matthew 24 that many are going to say, here he is, there he is in the wilderness or here he is in the inner rooms. Do not listen to them for the next appearance of Christ is going to be as visible as lightning.

It will be seen by the whole world. It's not going to be seen by a select few in secret. So there's no modern prophets, no modern day apostles. Now the way that I qualified that word prophet in the previous critique is that if we use the light application of that word, like we're lightly applying prophecy, we're not using prophecy in the sense of predicting the future or revealing things that have yet to pass.

But we're talking about prophecy is like prophesying or proclaiming. That is one of the ways that I think prophecy is used in first Corinthians or at least prophesy. And it's one of the ways I think Paul is using it here, not just talking about foretelling, but also forth telling.

Because once again, what is said in verse six is Paul saying, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what will I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation or of knowledge or of prophecy or of teaching.

So any one of those four could fit in this category of prophesying. What a pastor does today is prophesying. He is proclaiming the word of God, not as though he received some personal special revelation, but he's prophesying what comes from the scriptures.

And that word is doing a work in God's people. It is transforming those people. It is sanctifying God's people. We are brought to faith by the declaration of the word of God. And then, of course, there are things that we read about in scripture that have not yet come to pass, namely in the book of Revelation.

So there is still prophesying that is going on. But the right kind of prophesying that should be done today is proclaiming the word of God as we have it in scripture. There is not new revelation that God is giving to individual special persons.

His word has been given. It is complete. It is sufficient for our every need. Those who are continuists, who believe that these miraculous gifts are still regularly at work in the church today. On Sunday, the last time you were in church, there were churches out there that were practicing exactly these miraculous signs, whether it was prophesying the future, or it was speaking in tongues, or it was doing miraculous works of healing, or casting out demons, what's called deliverance ministry, or something like that.

All of this was happening in the church this past Sunday. That's what they will claim. But they have to redefine those miraculous signs. And what you see them doing, or what you see them practicing, or what you will hear them calling a miracle is quite different than what we have defined in the book of Acts.

Speaking in tongues is not speaking gibberish. That's never demonstrated in scripture. The demonstration of tongues, the only demonstration of it that we have in scripture is speaking other languages, other known languages, but were not known to the speaker.

What was happening when a person was speaking in tongues was clearly miraculous to those who were observing it. And speaking gibberish or having a private prayer language is not miraculous. So this is a redefined gift among continuous today, and it is not at work in the church.

Even if it were, Paul articulates it in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 as being the least of the miraculous gifts. What he would desire that a person should attain to is a desire to prophesy, for prophesying is what truly edifies the church.

The person speaking in tongues is not edifying the church. Now I, again, as I mentioned, take the position of a cessationist, and that's just with regards to miraculous gifts. I still believe that people receive spiritual gifts.

I believe that I have a spiritual gift of teaching. I would not be a good pastor if I had not been given that spiritual gift. And there are other people that have gifts of the spirit, things that the spirit is working in a person to be able to use that gift in the church for the edification of others.

We have been instructed to exercise these gifts to benefit one another and grow one another in the body of Christ in love. So we see those things articulated in places like Romans 12, and all of the gifts that are mentioned there in Romans 12 are very practical.

They're not miraculous. Whereas some of the gifts that we see, like in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, there are miraculous gifts that are mentioned there. In Ephesians 4, beginning in verse 11, where you have different positions that are mentioned, gifts of the spirit, like prophecy and apostleship, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers.

Those are not miraculous positions, with the exception of the prophet and the apostle, which are offices that are closed. But you have the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teacher. The spirit is still working in those individuals today.

And we're still in submission to the authority of prophets and apostles every time we open the scripture, because it was to them that God gave the scriptures that were written down for our benefit. Romans 15 .4, what was written in former days, was written for our instruction, that through the scriptures we might have hope.

So that's just a little bit of rehashing what we've already been through, redefining terms, or defining my terms, which, again, is something that these guys, whether it's on Remnant Radio or Sam Storms, don't do.

They don't define their terms. They're taking for granted that when they use an expression like speaking in tongues, you're thinking of speaking in gibberish, because that's what they're talking about.

Praying gibberish that is not actually a language at all and doesn't mean anything. Pagans can do that. There's nothing miraculous about that. And these guys are not able to produce miracles on the level of what Peter and John and the rest of the boys were doing in the Book of Acts.

So we come to part two of Sam Storms' critique here, and he begins part two this way. This was written on October 2nd. And so Storms says, this is the second installment in a series of articles in which I respond point-by-point to the arguments made in the recent film, Sessationist.

One of the more bewildering arguments, Storms says, made in the film is that there is no mention of miraculous sign gifts in the New Testament after the latter half of 1 Corinthians. So what we read here in 1 Corinthians 12 and in 1 Corinthians 14, where Paul is giving instructions about the usage of spiritual gifts and even some of the miraculous gifts, we don't see any instructions about miraculous spiritual gifts come up again anywhere else in the New Testament.

After 1 Corinthians, that's it. And it's astonishing even that when you get to the pastoral epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, you would think that would be a great place to talk about the working of the spirit in miraculous ways within the body.

And Paul says nothing about it. And 1 Timothy in particular, that letter is about how one ought to behave in the household of God. That's right there in 1 Timothy 3, verses 14 to 16. Instructions on how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church, a pillar and buttress of the truth.

But there's no instruction in there about using spiritual gifts in the book of 1 Timothy or in the other two pastoral epistles either. That's a point I'm going to come back to here in just a moment, because I'm going to play a clip from the documentary and the response that the Remnant Radio guys gave to it.

Storms continues, yet again, another contributor to the film asserted that there is no reference to miraculous gifts in the pastoral epistles. What should we make of this? Now that contributor in particular was Tom Pennington, and you're going to hear him say that here in a moment.

So Storm says in the first place, you should recognize this for what it is, an argument from silence. Of course it is. Of course it's an argument from silence. But sometimes an argument from silence is a pretty solid argument.

The fact that miraculous spiritual gifts are not mentioned in the pastoral epistles, especially where Paul is giving instruction about how one ought to behave in the household of God in 1st Timothy and Titus is especially where you find those instructions and yet nothing about using miraculous spiritual gifts in the church.

That's a pretty resounding silence, all things considered. So it is an argument from silence, but a good one. If we were to apply this notion, Storm says, to other things in scripture, we would end up with disastrous consequences.

Take but one example, the Lord's Supper. The only place where it is explicitly mentioned is in 1st Corinthians 10 through 11. There is no reference to this ordinance subsequent to Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth.

Should we then conclude that the practice died out or that God has rescinded the command to partake of the elements of bread and wine? Of course not. Second, nowhere in the New Testament are we told that the command in 1st Corinthians 12 to 14 to earnestly desire spiritual gifts no longer applies to Christians living subsequent to the writing of the letter.

Now, as I said in the previous part, in responding to this argument, is that no cessationist is saying that we should not desire spiritual gifts. No cessationist is saying that. Storms is taking it as if the cessationists are saying that.

The cessationist is saying that you shouldn't desire spiritual gifts. You absolutely should desire the spiritual gifts. Earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. Paul says in 1st Corinthians 14 .1, yes, you should.

In fact, you should even desire the gift of teaching. But as Paul had articulated back in chapter 12, not everybody is going to receive the gift of teaching. That gift is going to be the most edifying to the church, but it may not be for you to be a teacher.

And I had quoted from James 3 .1. Not many of you should aspire to be teachers, my brethren, for you know that teachers will be judged with greater strictness. So this is poor reasoning that Storms is using here.

He's really a straw man because he's saying that cessationists are saying that you shouldn't ask for the spiritual gifts and no cessationist is saying that. He's just saying that the miraculous gifts are not at work.

And many of those miraculous gifts were only at work through the apostles and no one else. So anyway, Storms goes on to say Paul was crystal clear in his first epistle to the church in Corinth and therefore felt no need to repeat himself in subsequent letters about desiring the spiritual gifts.

And again, no argument has been made that you shouldn't desire spiritual gifts. You absolutely should. Third, most believe Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in the spring of either 53, 54 or 55. He wrote Romans most likely in late 56 or early 57.

And he clearly mentions and encourages the gift of prophecy in Romans 12, 6 through 8. Yes, he does. But once again, I would argue that the gift of prophesying can also include, as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 14, 6, knowledge and teaching.

So if Paul was using that term in that way in Romans chapter 12, then he's not encouraging the church in the miraculous. He's just simply encouraging the church in the obedient teaching of the scriptures.

So then Storms goes on to say, so again, it is simply incorrect to say that such miraculous gifts are not mentioned after the writing of 1 Corinthians. Fourth, Paul refers to the gifts of apostleship and prophecy in Ephesians 4, 11.

And yes, like I said, and every cessationist that I know would agree with me on this. Apostle and prophet, those two offices that are mentioned there in Ephesians 4, 11, still offices that we're in submission to today.

Every time we open the scriptures, we're reading what was given to the prophets and the apostles. That does not mean that there are new prophets and new apostles today. There are not. Those offices are closed.

So we are still in subjection to those prophets and apostles. What does that verse say? Exactly. Ephesians 4, 11. And God gave some to be prophets and apostles, some to be evangelists, some to be shepherds and teachers.

And indeed he did. He gave some to be prophets and apostles and they've already been, and there won't be anymore. And we are still in subjection to what they taught as the foundation of the church, as Paul had previously mentioned them as being back in Ephesians 2 and 3, that they are the foundation of the church with Christ being the cornerstone.

That was already talked about in Ephesians. And so then you get to Ephesians 4 and you read that about apostles and prophets. Those are offices that are closed. God did give them for the pronouncement of the gospel and the foundation of the scriptures that were given to us.

We're still in submission to those offices today, but no one new is being appointed to those offices today. That's a very simple understanding. It's very simple exegesis of Ephesians to understand the passage that way.

But storm goes on. Most scholars agree that Ephesians was written in 62 AD. So we have yet again another piece of evidence that the cessationist claim that miraculous gifts are not mentioned subsequent to 1 Corinthians is simply and undeniably false.

Well again, that's a straw man argument because he doesn't even understand the argument as it's being presented by the cessationist. Fifth, if certain gifts like prophecy and tongues and healing were not intended to exist in the church beyond the first two or three decades of its existence, why doesn't Paul or Peter or John or Luke clearly say so?

Now listen there. What is that? That's an argument from silence. So here's storms is contending with the cessationist is making an argument from silence, and that's exactly what he does here on this fifth point.

So when Paul gave his exhortation, this is storms again. When Paul gave his exhortation in first Thessalonians 5, 19 to 21, not to despise prophetic utterances, why didn't he simply tell them not to worry about prophecy since it would soon die out and never to be a problem to anyone again?

Well, once again, what kind of prophecy is Paul talking about there? Is he talking about new visions and revelations now in the context of first Thessalonians? He most likely is because the canon is not complete.

And first Thessalonians was one of Paul's earliest letters. It was either it either preceded Galatians or was written after Galatians. But one way or the other. So anyway, there's debate as to whether or not first Thessalonians is Paul's first letter or Galatians in the chronology of the order in which these letters were written.

So it could be that first Thessalonians was first. And if that's the case, makes sense. First Thessalonians would precede even first Corinthians. So there is still prophecy going on, prophesying in the church in that there is new revelation that has been given because canon is still being written.

So indeed, as Paul tells the Thessalonians to not despise the prophecies, but he also tells them to test all things, to hold fast to that which is good and abhor what is evil. And once again, testing would go back to the scriptures.