As a result of my reading prayerfully, and praying scripturally, I enjoy daily guidance from God. So yes, everything must pass through the filter of scripture. But there ought to be personal revelation, such as Peter and Paul received from the Lord (e.g., the vision of the sheet and the vision that there would be no loss of life on the ship), that bears directly on an individual's ministry.
Someone might say, "Yeah, but that was before the close of the NT canon." But I would say that Peter and Paul's experiences with God's specific guidance forms a highly scriptural template for guidance I may expect in my life, today. I don't see why it wouldn't. Notwithstanding that I see John Macarthur quoting "if there be prophecies, they shall cease", I don't see adequate context for that to mean it has ceased already. I see that as a future event.
I have heard exponents of Macarthur's view say that "when that which is perfect is come" refers to the concluding of the assembly of the final canon of scripture. But I see a much better fulfillment of "that which is perfect is come" than that: I see it as yet future, when the Lord Jesus Christ Himself returns to planet Earth. Now that will be perfect! And I see that as the obvious fulfillment of the 1 Cor. 13 prophecy.
But I also realize there are varied opinions on this matter, and different theological disciplines; and I don't want these distinctives to divide us into amputated body parts. One day, we will no longer just "know in part"; knowledge will be transparent.
I have learned to be a bit chary of claims that “God can’t possibly do thus and such” which it isn’t something the scripture solidly rules out.
We have an uneasy theological hedge in the Protestant world against problems in the modern system of Roman Catholic (and less spoken of, but equally applicable) Orthodox theology. The church as a whole let itself fall into a human-driven empiricism, like the idea that it could take a secular government or governments under its organizational wing, and that can’t be wished away by more of the same. Christ, with a plan embracing the salvation of every willing soul, is not caught flat footed, so to speak. He allows the errors and the truths to play out in a scene in which He keeps His promises.
I believe we are right to expect that anything valid we hear from the supernatural is going to be backed up by the promises of God that we now know, and is going to be in the way of carrying out these promises. Old principles will never change; new particulars can and will appear.
That belief, that direct revelation from God is over, often seems to be at the heart of many of our underlying problems within and outside of the current institutionalized Church.
Otoh, perhaps this is a semantics thing and I am misunderstanding him?
If by 'direct revelation' the author is referring to His miracles while He was in the flesh, then yes, that sort of 'direct revelation' ended on the Cross.
However, and without going too far into the metaphysical, if what Christianity teaches is true, that God lives within us and we within Him, then direct revelation is always possible.
In fact, isn't that the Gift of His Holy Spirit?
More and more, I see the Bible as the handbook of life, a supernatural/spiritual textbook full of situational lesson templates that He uses to teach His children His Ways, Wit and Wisdom here in Schoolhouse Earth for the short time we're here.
It's all there in the handbook, what to do, what not to do and why. Nothing new under the sun/Son.
We may again have a pattern here. The assembly of the witness of our modern Holy Bible made special supernatural witnesses of the kind common in the early church less necessary, but it never utterly banished them. The purpose, perhaps, was to focus on the main godly theme of agape. A church that was forever chiefly about external supernatural displays, would miss the point. But we are still weak, still sinners, and an augmented message may still be needed from time to time by way of special lessons to teach us what we need to know under special circumstances. I am loath to frown upon the “charismatic churches” just because that is their style; it may be that these people need exactly that kind of witness to believe. And panning them broadly may violate the attitude of agape that God wants us to take. Someone that we have panned unmercifully might not be too willing to hear a message to the good.
And so the perfect could be prefigured by the completion of the bible canon, but actually realized by the physical second arrival of Christ.