I think sometimes the way we ask a question can lead us to a particular answer. The question, if I understand it correctly, is basically this. If there are modern day prophets, who are they and where are they?
First, the OT prophets. There are perhaps two dozen or so that are recorded in scripture. Noah is among that list. So, we see that in approx. 4000 years we have somewhere near two dozen, or one appearing, on average, every 170 years or so. But we know that the prophets came in clusters. For example, most of the OT prophets were in the period between Saul's kingship and the final dispersion of Israel and Judah into captivity. A very short time span.
Second, the OT prophets had a very specific purpose from God. They were His mouthpieces to the nation of Israel. What they wrote down was intended, by God, to be recorded as the word of God. We still benefit from this today. Nothing they said is totally irrelevant to us today. In fact, much of it is still very applicable and some totally relevant to our time period. But the only reason we know who they were is because God intended for them specifically to write down what they were given by Him.
Third, the majority of the known world did not even know these prophets existed. What they wrote was to a specific people at a specific time.
My point in these three statements is as follows.
In the NT we find certain prophets and teachers gathering and ordaining Paul and Barnabus for apostleship. We have no extant writings from these prophets. We do not see them foretelling the future for the purpose of being recorded and passed to us as scripture. We simply see mention that they were prophets. Another is Agabus who foretold Paul's arrest and captivity. His prophesy is recorded only as a historical fact, not for us, but for Paul in that time.
Prophets did not only foretell future events. Much of what the OT prophets said was about God's feelings toward Israel and what they were doing.
If there were modern day prophets, I would not necessarily expect to know who they were except in a local sense through personal interaction with these men. God sent specific prophets over 4000 years, mainly focused on a brief period of history, to serve to record His message to us in scripture. They are known through their writings. But the canon is complete. Modern prophets would necessarily serve a slightly different function in the body, and would not be known through their writings.
So I think the question begs the answer. But if we asked the question a different way, we might get a different answer. I know a few men who I would call modern day prophets. They always seem to carry the right now word of the Lord. They spend copious amounts of time in His presence, and have a gift of prayer like I have never seen on other man. I have seen them continually say, "This is what God is saying to the body right now..." and they have been proven to be spot on every time. So perhaps the question should be this.
Do any of us know men who carry, consistently and accurately, the right now word of God to the body? Do any of us know men to whom God gives these words regularly and who deliver them boldly?
I know of at least two, and I believe, although they would never proclaim themselves prophets, that these men are indeed.
