A religious phenomenon, generally associated with Judaism and Christianity, but found throughout the various faiths of the world since the earliest times. Prophecy is derived from an inspired person believing he or she is the deliverer of a message from the deity. The message is usually ascertained through visions, dreams, or the casting of lots. The purport of prophecy now, as in the past, is twofold: either to declare the divine will in a set of dicta telling us what to believe and how to live our lives and behave towards each other, or to forewarn us in a set of predictions about future events.
Frequently prophetic mystics maintain that religious truths are revealed only to them alone, and their truths are the only authentic certain set of beliefs. This type of prophecy is usually instigated by a call from God. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah’s call was in the form of a vision in which Yahweh told him that he had been chosen before he was born (Jer. 1:5). The significance of such a call is that it legitimizes whatever follows, which could be a denial of a traditional belief system or the proposing of a completely new ethical social approach. In effect, given the right circumstances, prophecy could lay the foundations for the founding of new religions, as, for example, it did in the cases of Zoroaster, Jesus, or Muhammad. If a high ecstatic state is reached, prophecy may start to be proclaimed in the first person singular, making the audience believe that God is speaking through the mouth of the prophet. Other prophets, like the Old Testament Ezekiel, and later Islam’s Muhammad, frequently went into ecstatic trances, throwing them¬ selves around and completely losing control of themselves, which led some people to regard them as madmen.