Did Christian prophets Bob Jones and Paul Cain have the power to see the future?

I wish to draw an important distinction regarding your question. In general, can prophets foresee the future? Sure they can - if God reveals it to them. Let's review what prophecy is.

Numbers 12:6:

Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream.

So prophecy is revelation from God, given through visions or dreams. It is definitely NOT a "power" that people have, or are given. That is actually what makes prophecy different from witchcraft or sorcery. Sorcery is the use or acquisition of power through magical means. Power that one then uses of his own initiative. Notice this even in the words of Simon the Sorcerer to Peter and John in Acts 8:19, for which Peter rebuked him strongly:

“Give me this power also, that anyone on whom I lay hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”

So my answer is NO, neither Bob Jones nor Paul Cain had the "power to see the future". If they did, they would not be prophets, but sorcerers. In the jargon of the Charismatic movement, people refer to the "anointing" of a prophet. While any believer (and even occasionally non-believers) can receive visions and dreams from God, some have a more potent 'anointing' and have more frequent and more intense experiences.

There is (or was - some channels on YouTube where their stuff was posted have recently disappeared) ample documentary material available online of visions and dreams that both Bob Jones and Paul Cain claimed to have received from God. Some of those are verifiable / falsifiable predictions of specific future events. Others are future oriented but not predictive: "When you see X, respond in this way." Others are personal prophecy, meaningful only to the individuals concerned. Others are revelations of wisdom or teaching and not predictive in nature. All of these are considered valid forms of prophecy by Pentecostal and Charismatic believers.

The point being, even though most of their prophecy is not verifiable / falsifiable, does not make it junk. It is a matter of whether you trust them as legitimate prophets. Those claims of theirs that are verifiable, absolutely should be verified, as a means of establishing trust or identifying false prophets.

I recall the specific prediction from Bob Jones in the question, about the Kansas City Royals winning the World Series. This prediction was not given just to show off an ability to predict the future. God is not a sports bookie, and it would be akin to tempting God to expect a prophecy to be specific enough that it could be used for betting or profit.

The point of that prophecy was to provide a 'sign'. The victory of the Kansas City Royals was to be a sign of a spiritual victory of some kind in the area of Kansas City that would come to have historical importance into the future.

“It looks like Kansas City is down and out and will never make it and suddenly at 5 till 12 the Lord brings the victory in. That’s the spiritual message over this movement breaking forth in this city. When it looks like it is five till twelve and Kansas City is counted out. Suddenly at 5 till 12 the Lord’s breaking in victory.”

While phrased as a prediction, it wasn't really, in my opinion. If the Royals had lost the World Series that year, they would have looked to a future year for that sign (and the Royals won again in 2015), not concluded that the prophecy was false.

As to the verifiability that the claim was made in advance of the Royals' victory - it's going to be tough. There was no such thing as YouTube or Instagram or TikTok in 1985. Unless somebody had a VHS camcorder and somehow documented and published it in advance of the game, there will probably be no proof. Maybe, just maybe, if the prediction was made far enough in advance, somebody might have an old pamphlet or transcription of it with a date printed on it. (If you're willing to believe it's not a more recent forgery.) Otherwise you'll just have to take Mike Bickle's word for it.

One of the most explosive and verifiable prophetic claims of recent history comes to us through Times Square Church pastor David Wilkerson, who died in a car crash in 2011 but on March 7, 2009 posted on his blog this very specific and dire prediction. At the time, he was openly doubted even among Pentecostals, but his prediction was completely fulfilled starting in the summer months of 2020.

Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires... There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City.

Very, very few people in 2009 believed that in the near future, societal disruption of that scale would be possible in America. But now, it cannot be denied that his prophetic prediction was true and accurate.

There is no need to name individuals here because this question covers a very wide range of people in the last century or so who have claimed to have a God-given power to “see the future”. They believed themselves to be modern-day prophets, and they also claimed to be Christians. Given that the Bible states that anything a prophet claims to say in the name of the Lord, which causes turning to false gods, proves that person to be a false prophet who must not be listened to and even stoned to death, there is a need to check out such claims carefully (Deuteronomy chapter 13). Jesus underscored that by saying to beware of false prophets who would arise, and who he would not recognise on the Day of Judgment despite them prophecying and miraculous things (Matthew 7:15-23).

History is littered with claims of many to see the future. The question is, do their visions and “words of knowledge” come from the one true God, or another invisible source? History also shows that the early Church had to start dealing with this important matter from round about the second century, due to growing influences of the Gnostics, and the Montanists. The twentieth (and twenty-first) century has modern-day variations on that, claiming to be Christian. Here is how one scholar expressed the problem in the book below:

“With modern pluralism and tolerance of dissenting views, as well as separation of church and state, Gnosticism has once again reared its head to challenge the apostolic gospel of salvation. Seldom does it identify itself as Gnosticism. Often it is presented by self-styled esoteric Christians as a purer form of Christianity for genuinely spiritual people who cannot abide the smothering dogma and institutionalism of officially orthodox churches.” The Story of Christian Theology, pp. 29-30, Roger E. Olson, Apollos, 1999

The author then names two individuals and gives examples but, as I said at the start, there’s no need to delve into individual examples because once unchanging Bible principles are established regarding this matter, any prophecies or ‘words of knowledge’ can then be checked out. It might be worth mentioning, by the way, that where there appears to be vagueness about exact dates when prophecies were given, that’s worth bearing in mind. The author then goes into how Montanism can be spotted in its various modern-day manifestations:

“Is Montanism – or something like it – still alive and well in the modern era? The August 14, 1991 Christianity Today magazine featured a cover story on a Montanist-like movement called the Kansas City Fellowship. 6 This particular movement, led by a charismatic group of self-styled prophets, had many of the marks of early Christian Montanism but without some of the excesses. The centerpiece of the movement – as in many other similar charismatic sects – was personal prophecy delivered by special prophets to guide individuals’ lives and predict the course of the world’s future. Without rejecting the Bible, the prophets considered themselves able to speak words from God of equal weight and importance. One labeled himself “Paul’s successor” referring to the apostle Paul).

Other recent charismatic movements have emphasized an alleged difference between logos and rhema – two Greek words for “word” – such that modern-day messages from God through prophecies (rhema) may supersede and even correct apostolic writings that were true and relevant for the first century (logos). Wherever and whenever prophesy is elevated in theory or practice alongside or higher than Scripture, Montanism rears its head. Like Gnosticism, Montanism challenged the early church and challenges the church in modern times to think and respond theologically in order that Christianity may not become anything and everything and thus nothing in particular.” (Ibid. p. 33)

This answer provides a way of sorting out whether (in the specific examples you give) “the cap fits.” If it does (and the sources you cite will give information to examine), then the old saying continues – “wear it.”

Very simply, those who believe such modern-day prophets as you detail to be speaking from God, will give evidences to back up that belief. Those who are skeptical (based on such comments as I have quoted) will be unlikely to be convinced, knowing the value of learning from Christian history.

There are two issues here. Firstly, baseball is not a good sport to be "prophesying" on, neither historically and particularly in the current analytics era. Secondly, there is the general theological point.

Prediction in the era of strong analytics I'm a professional analyst and understand analytics at many levels, from why Google sends you with the right ads to why clinical therapies fail (check my other SE sites). I don't do sport analytics, but supposing I did ...

• obtained all relevant variables for every aspect of baseball;
• discarded my early models;
• then predict within the range of Bob Jones - on a regular basis.

Does make me a "prophet"? Does it make my extensive algorithms holy? Clearly not.

History Baseball is the original sport of sport analytics, starting in the early 1900s. A sports analyst famously identified the 1919 World Series was fixed by the White Sox, and 8 players permanently banned as a result in court. The analyst was believed because of his "remarkable" predictions of previous baseball results. If he could do that then, the predictive power would be much, much stronger now.

Baseball and "good guessers" Baseball should also be susceptible to "good guesses" - intuition - that is well known in analytics: if a computer/or analyst can do this with strong predictive power then individuals who know everything about a sport (or given subject) will have strong intuition. The difference is the analyst can prove their calculation leading to the prediction, whilst the non-analytical expert (like baseball coach) can't do that. Some non-analytical experts will be naturally able to do this much better than others without divine intervention of future outcomes. It must do because in analysis some investigators intuitively understand the hypotheses and have a strong insight into the final answer at a very early stage of investigation: they spot past patterns then project them to the future.

To absolutely address the question, can intuitive people work by dreams? Absolutely. The discovery of benzene (a chemical structure of carbon and hydrogen) was famously deduced from a dream.

I would refrain from "debunking" Bob Jones. Why doubt his integrity? However, I would simply suggest he has mistaken strong intuition, for a sport he likely follows very closely, for divine insight into the future.

An analyst's insight Critically looking at the prediction, what is clear is the Bob Jones did not predict the opposing teams score and this very strongly decreases the probability of an incorrect intuitive guess (e.g. within statistical power series). Even using a relatively simply model I suspect it would be quite easy to predict this outcome with reasonable accuracy.

There is an issue about the definition of prophecy between different sections of Christianity. What are describing might fall within charismatic theology, but it might not, given it could result in personal gain (or losses) via gambling, i.e. Matthew 6

²⁴ No man can serve two masters: for either he. will hate the one, and love the other; or else. he will hold to the one, and despise the other.

In the Old Testament a prophet was described as per Deuteronomy 18 (NIV):

²¹ You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” ²² If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken.

So an Old Testament prophet is someone who speaks a message from the Lord, in the name of the Lord, and the events that unfold take place. Predicting the future correctly alone was not grounds for prophecy in Deuteronomy 13 (NIV):

¹ If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, ² and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” ³ you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer

Agabus in Acts 11 correctly predicts the future, but he is not described as a prophet (NIV),

²⁸ One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.)