Just to clarify...what you are calling the gift of prophecy is NOT the same thing as the revelation God gave to His holy Prophets. That their prophecies would NOT fail was a hallmark and sign that they were TRUE prophets. God warned His people against false prophets and said one of the major ways they would know the difference was in whether or not what the prophet said came to pass (see Deuteronomy 18:22)
The word "prophecy" or "prophesize" can also mean to teach, refute, reprove, admonish, comfort others. I believe it is this kind of NT special knowledge or prophecy that can "fail", "cease", "become useless", "pass away", etc. God's word will NEVER pass away, therefore what He has spoken through His prophets will also not pass away or fail.
Right. New Testament prophecies can fail. Old Testament Prophets, who wrote the Word of God, their prophecies are the Word of God and have not and will not ever fail. The prophecies of small “p” prophets of the Church age, are not the Word of God and can fail. (Though this is not an excuse for outright false prophecy, which is always born of false teaching.)
Paul is talking about the New Testament gift of prophecy when he says “prophecies will fail”.
Jesus is talking about the entirety of the Bible when He said “heaven and earth shall pass away, but the Word is forever “or eternal.
Just to go all metaphysical on you, the Word is the Logos, i.e. the meaning behind the actual language of the Bible no matter what different language it is translated.
This Logos is God.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God... and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”
This Word or Logos is God. This is why it is Eternal.
And to add to your definition of “prophecy”; it says in Revelation that “the testimony of Jesus is spirit of prophecy”. This means that as we stand in our testimony of Christ, we naturally are walking in a prophetic mode, same as Jesus. Cool huh?
I think that’s where there’s a lot of confusion today (over the meaning of the word *prophecy*)
So what we end up having is people who are (or think they are) OT kind of prophesying, instead of being gifted with an unusual ability to teach or apply the word to other’s lives with unusual clarity.
This is intuitively rendered advice or predictions from urging presumed to be of the Spirit, but apart from any firm incontestible Scriptural grounding. It might have been OK in Paul's time, but not now. True current prophecy is from a person spiritually mature in the clear knowledge of the Will of God, Scripturally defensible, now that we have the completed text that covers every human need. There is no extra knowledge that does not conform to it. If there is, let's have a bit of it to prove this stance is wrong. And not hearsay, either.